


A Little Girl in Torquay

by ChummyGeekery



Series: Freddie-Davey-Bea Timeline [2]
Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: Adoption, Domestic Fluff, Family Drama, Family Fluff, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Thalidomide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-05-12 13:23:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 31,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19229977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChummyGeekery/pseuds/ChummyGeekery
Summary: Peter and Chummy decide to complete their family via adoption- and are soon led towards a very special little girl. But the drive to a Devonshire orphanage and back is part of a much bigger journey of family and friendship, healing and love. (Sequel to Just Beneath Her Heart: 1962-64.)(WIP. Repost from my fanfiction.net account.)





	1. Noakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An East End mechanic is confronted with his past- and surprised by kindness.

The scooter was a 1958 Vespa 125. The Sisters of Saint Raymond Nonnatus, an Anglican order of nurse-midwives, had purchased it after a particularly successful summer fete. They’d originally planned on using it to haul gas and air to home deliveries. But the plan was shelved after the carburetor proved fickle- and several nitrous oxide canisters plunged to their doom on the East End cobblestones. The Vespa was left under a canvas in the convent tool shed, until such time as one of the nuns or their lay-nurse colleagues might require it. 

That time would come in 1962.

The nurse was a former colleague of the Order’s. She had come out of retirement to pitch in while half the Nonnatans were on an emergency mission overseas. She could handle the work itself, but making rounds on a bicycle- the Nonnatans’ standard mode of transport- had proven “physically taxing” for her. Tony Amos, the garage owner’s son-in-law, was given no further details. He didn’t ask any questions; he never could abide snoops.

A young, low-voiced little nun brought the Vespa round the garage. She asked if, once he’d replaced the carburetor, Tony might teach the nurse how to ride it? Their scooter-savvy colleagues were all currently abroad. Tony said he’d be glad to help. He agreed to meet the nurse at one o’clock on Saturday at the garage.

Saturday was warmish, drippy but not properly raining. One could hardly hope for better riding weather in January. Tony busied himself with some oil changes while he waited for the nurse. He entertained a vague notion that he’d be meeting a diminutive older woman with a cozy, middle-class manner.

At quarter after one, a navy blue Vauxhall Wyvern EIX stopped down the block from the garage. A tall, big-shouldered figure clambered out of the passenger seat. The figure stooped and waved into the car’s back window, then headed towards the garage while the car turned and drove off.

At first Tony thought the approaching figure was a man. They wore slacks and loafers beneath a blue overcoat, and their stature only grew more impressive as they came nearer. This person was a head taller than Tony; or maybe two heads; well, over six foot in any case. Their hands and feet were rather large, almost ungainly on the ends of lanky arms and legs. Tony was downright jealous of those shoulders.

But then she spoke, in a sweet, high voice:

“I say. Is that the old Vespa? You’ve really got her back in tip-top condition, what? You’re Tony Amos, I presume?”

“Yes.”

“How do you do? I’m Chummy: your hapless pupil for the day.”

“Oh! Hello, Chummy.” He coughed back his surprise, stepped forward and shook her hand. “Don’t write yourself off just yet. Riding a scooter’s not that different from riding a bike.”

“Yes, well…” she started sheepishly.

“Sorry. Can you ride a bike? I assumed, ‘cos you were a Nonnatus nurse…”

“I can ride a bike.” She sounded almost defensive. She twisted her gloves in her hands. “But I only learned when I came to the district five years ago. One wonders: does the adage about ‘one never forgets’ still apply if one first learned as an adult?”

“Guess we’ll find out,” Tony grinned.

She certainly wasn’t the little old lady he’d pictured. Tony wasn’t a skilled judge of women’s ages, but he’d guess Chummy was no older than forty. Her face was lined quite lightly, and her chestnut-brown bob had only the merest hint of gray. She wasn’t middle-class, either- or at least, she hadn’t been raised as such. She had a ‘rather mahvlous’ accent, real top-shelf stuff.

And she obviously wasn’t a man. The convent never would have had her, for one thing. But then there was her voice, gentle despite the sharp accent. Her eyes were doe-like behind her specs; her smile was a bit shy. She was feminine, not in the cutting and practiced way of many women, (and even some men Tony used to know,) but in the unpolished manner of a young girl.

The practicalities of the scooter were easy enough. Chummy already knew how to start it. Hand signals were the same as they were for cyclists. The gauges and meters were familiar, as she sometimes drove her husband’s Vauxhall. The rack behind the seat was more than adequate for her bag of midwife’s tools. And the convent had already worked out an agreement for weekly tire checks and petrol fillings.

It was the physicalities of riding that seemed to elude Chummy. First it took them twenty minutes to find a pair of goggles that fit comfortably over her spectacles. Then it was an age before she found a sitting posture that didn’t crimp her legs, throw her off-kilter when she accelerated, or cause her discomfort. From time to time, Tony saw Chummy wince, and briefly hover her hands just below her waist. This must have had something to do with her inability to make rounds on a bicycle. Tony suspected it was some sort of “women’s ailment.” He made no mention of it.

He did offer to take a break whenever she liked. “We keep some biscuits and Horlicks off in the side room, where it’s clean.”

“Horlicks, you say?” Chummy smiled and raised her eyebrows.

“My daughter’s favorite. My wife brings her round the garage sometimes.”

“It’s rather my favorite as well,” Chummy confessed. “Would it be too much to hope for, that you might also have an ice water bottle?”

They didn’t. But Tony improvised: he took one of the thick rubber gloves they used for handling potential live wires, and he filled it with some snow lingering in a shaded corner. Chummy called it “top hole, rather ingenious.” They kept a few folding chairs in the garage, for when Tony’s father-in-law’s friends came round. Tony set one out for Chummy. She sat with the glove in her lap- until it started to melt and leak. Tony was apologetic. But she assured him that the glove had been “helpful while it lasted,” and that “a little water never hurt anything.”

Over Horlicks and biscuits, they chatted about their children. Chummy had two boys: Freddie was three, and Davey was six months old. Tony and his wife had a daughter, Julia: she would turn two in May.

“Oh yes, you have quite the lovely little family. I remember now,” Chummy remarked.

Tony’s chest tightened. So Chummy remembered the trial. Of course she did; no one in the East End had forgotten. It was the gossip of the decade. When meeting new people, Tony could only hope they didn’t realize that _he_ was the man from that sordid headline. But now Chummy must have put two and two together…

“Your wife got on quite famously with Nurse Franklin, didn’t she? She’s one of our finest, and frightfully vivacious, rather. Do you know, she’s in South Africa right this moment? I imagine when off the clock, she’s holding court in a grass hut, painting local women’s nails and giving them facials!”

Chummy said nothing more about the time surrounding Julia’s birth. Still, Tony was sure she knew. The next chance he had to half-naturally slip it into conversation, he told her that Julia was his whole world.

“I live for her. In everything I do.”

“As all parents should,” Chummy smiled. She seemed to trust him as much as ever. Perhaps she hadn’t put two and two together, after all. Meanwhile Tony had barely stopped himself from blurting: _I’ve been behaving myself. Taking those bloody pills. I’ve got the blood tests to prove it, even._

They returned to the taming of the Vespa. Progress was slow and clumsy. But what Chummy lacked in grace, she made up for in cheery determination. No jolting start or skidding stop, no botched turn or near-fall, could deter her from hopping right back on.

“She’s a lively little filly, but I’ll get the measure of her soon enough,” she said, patting the Vespa affectionately. “The women of the district are depending on it.”

By the time Chummy was ready for a simple obstacle course, the brushed-steel sky was darkening towards an early night. She’d accumulated an audience of over a dozen neighborhood children. They’d all been warned against loitering outside this particular garage. But how could they resist the temptation to watch some hoity-toity klutz try and master the art of the motor scooter?

A nun marched up the lane. Tony didn’t recognize her. She had a pinched face, and a voice to match. “Nurse Noakes!” she called.

Chummy looked up from adjusting the mirror. “Yes, Sister Ursula?”

The nun began to lecture Chummy for taking up the mechanic’s time, which after all was attached to the Order’s limited funds. Tony scarcely heard a word. The name _Noakes_ had kicked him in the gut.

There had been a Sergeant Noakes at the gentleman’s convenience that night, two years ago. Not the handsome young copper with the whistle: Noakes was one of the stodgy ones who barged in after the whistle blew. Noakes was the one who handcuffed Tony. Noakes was the one who turned him round roughly by the shoulders. Noakes was the one who shoved Tony out into a world where he couldn’t show his face.

Noakes had testified for the prosecution. He’d looked out over the courtroom at no one in particular, and narrated levelly:

_“The defendant made sexual advances to my colleague, Constable Jamieson. And on my arrival I witnessed the defendant in a state of undress…”_

Nurse Noakes. Chummy Noakes. Was she Sergeant Noakes’ sister-in-law? His wife? It didn’t really matter. She was a Noakes. Tony could no longer bring himself to look her in the eye. Even though her round brown eyes were warm and innocent. So unlike Sergeant Noakes’ squinting, icy blues.

He felt no righteous anger or betrayal- only the familiar shame. When Chummy held out her hand to him, it took Tony a moment to remember what to do. His handshake was limp. He pulled away quickly.

“Tony,” she said softly. She paused. “Thank you. You’ve been so very kind.”

She set off on the scooter, slow and tottering, her knuckles white over the handlebars. After half a block, she turned back, smiled toothily, and gave him a playful salute.

Tony thought back on the afternoon. How Chummy never let on about the trial, even though she must have known all along. How she never gave him her surname. Perhaps that was deliberate. Perhaps, when she had her husband drop her off a block away, she wasn’t trying to protect her family from Tony. Perhaps she was protecting Tony from her husband.

Chummy had said Tony was kind. But she had shown him more kindness than almost anyone in the past two years.


	2. One of Each

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The return of Myrtle Noakes! And one suspects that young Davey Noakes takes after his mother's side in terms of stature...

“Oof! Up you go, young Master Noakes. Let’s see how we’re getting on, shall we?”

Nurse Patsy Mount set Chummy’s infant son, Davey, in the clinic’s weighing chair.

“Seventeen pounds! Well aren’t _we_ growing at a healthy clip.” She smiled and tapped him on the nose. “Well done, you!”

“But he’s not _too_ big, is he?” Chummy asked quietly.

Patsy consulted the growth charts. “No, not at all. He’s just above the ninety-fifth centile for weight. But he’s at the same centile for length, and his growth curves are tracking normally from his three-month checkup. Not to worry, old thing. Everything’s tickety-boo and marvelous.”

They shared a smile. Chummy already knew everything Patsy had just told her. If a patient’s baby had been long and hefty at three months, then turned up long and hefty again at six months, she wouldn’t have skipped a beat. But one couldn’t help but fret when the baby was one’s own. Just like the most brisk, no-nonsense of nurses started cooing when the baby belonged to a friend.

Myrtle Noakes, Chummy’s mother-in-law, craned to study the growth chart. She pushed her pink cat’s-eye specs up the bridge of her nose.

“Now ‘ow’s this work, again?” she asked loudly. “You say they’ve measured _thousands_ of babies? And if you put Davey in a room with a hundred other six-month-olds, he’d be bigger than _ninety-five_ of ‘em?”

Chummy’s face felt warm. _Say it again a bit louder, Myrtle,_ she thought to herself. _I don’t think they heard you in the contraception clinic down the corridor._

But she couldn’t complain, really. Myrtle was quite the fantastic mother-in-law. Yes, she could be opinionated; but she was just as free-spoken with her affections. She called Chummy “the best thing that ever ‘appened to my Peter.” Chummy and Peter’s two little boys were Myrtle’s “angels.” They were also her “second chance to be Nan to little’uns,” as Peter’s older sister had had her youngest eight years ago.

Myrtle wasn’t all talk, either. When Chummy was unwell after Davey’s birth, Myrtle had left her cozy retirement cottage in Walton-on-Naze and returned to London to pitch in. Chummy and Myrtle hadn’t been close before that summer, and it was difficult for Chummy to cede control of her household to the other woman. She’d found Myrtle stifling and patronizing at first. Myrtle kept insisting that Chummy rest up, lift nothing heavier than the teapot, leave Freddie and Davey to their Nan, rest up some more…

Then Chummy learned that Myrtle had also suffered through “major surgery below the waist.” After that, Chummy began to see her fussing in a different light. Myrtle wasn’t simpering but sympathetic. Her precautions stemmed not from fear but from experience. When Chummy finally started bouncing back, she had Myrtle to celebrate with: quietly of course, and out of earshot of the men. 

Myrtle had stayed on until Davey was nearly three months old. Afterwards, Chummy was glad to be the sole lady of the house again. Yet she’d been sad to see Myrtle go. Months later, when Chummy received the call to aid the Nonnatans, Myrtle was quick to come back and “au pair” the boys. And there was no one better suited for the job, Chummy thought.

“Are his eyes alright, Nurse?” Myrtle asked Patsy. “Only when he was newly born, his eyes were like Peter and Freddie’s: real light blue like. They’re darker now, but nothin’ like his mum’s.”

Patsy flicked a pen light across Davey’s face, causing him to sputter in protest.

“Quite right, Mrs. Noakes,” she said. “Brown-eyed children often start out as blue-eyed babies. It’s perfectly normal for them to start changing, gradually, at about this age. It appears Davey’s eyes are going to be brown like his mother’s. Just give it time.”

Myrtle gently ribbed Chummy with her elbow. “You ‘ear that, love? Brown eyes like yours. What wiv Freddie ‘avin’ Peter’s blues, you’ll ‘ave one of each!”

“Yes,” Chummy smiled. To her surprise, a lump sprang up in her throat.

_One of each._


	3. The Winds of Change

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chummy encounters an old friend on her rounds, while she and the Nonnatuns adjust to life and work under Sister Ursula.

As Chummy made her rounds, she thought of how much had changed since she’d first arrived in the East End.

There were now more family automobiles mixed in with the transport lorries and city buses. The bomb sites had all finally been cleared. High-rise council flats were springing up in their place: obelisks of steel and concrete, they loomed over the low-slung dockside community. At a distance they were handy landmarks; up close, they were dizzying. Meanwhile the Canada buildings, a sextet of grim tenements dating from the Victorian era, sat vacant and plastered in demolition notices.

Dressmakers filled their windows with blockish dresses and skirt suits, in single bold colors _a la_ Jackie Kennedy. The floral-printed A-lines of 1957 would have looked winsome and quaint today. Home electronics shops shrank down their radio displays to make room for television sets. Even the tobacconist-confectioners were feeling the winds of change. Tobacco coils were slinking off before a tidy march of cigarette boxes, while the sweets section was ever larger, brighter-colored- and lower-shelved. Advertisers were shameless in reaching into parents’ pockets with their children’s hands. As Chummy was reminded any time she took Freddie shopping.

The forest of washing over the residential streets was thinning out. More families were using launderettes now, while the most fortunate had their own washers and dryers. Children weren’t as frantic when a football bounced off or the chalk rolled away- they could always fetch another. From time to time, Chummy would hear someone call down the lane to her: “Akela! Akela!” But the voices weren’t always familiar. She might turn and find one of her former Cub Scouts grown half a foot, with peach fuzz on his upper lip and a crack in his new, deeper voice.

One evening, as she left a patient’s home, she spotted a broad-shouldered youth in a leather jacket loitering by the Vespa. She approached cautiously at first. Her apprehension melted when she recognized his signature protective stance: legs slightly apart, arms crossed, chin thrust out. 

“Jack!” she cried.

He still had that same blonde bowl cut, and a hint of a baby face. An almost maternal affection swept her, and she moved to hug him.

“Steady on, Miss!” Jack laughed. They shook hands instead.

Jack Smith was a boy of eleven when Chummy first came to Poplar. He’d watched as the other nurses taught her how to ride a bike. The other children had laughed, but Jack had quietly admired her determination. As she gradually got the hang of cycling, Jack appointed himself Chummy’s teacher, escort and bodyguard. He knew the other children mocked his “Miss” for her clumsiness, her posh accent, her unusual size. But none of them dared to crack a grin when Jack Smith crossed his arms and squared his jaw.

He was a young man of sixteen now. He advised her to get a padlock for the Vespa: “Just in case, Miss. You never know what sorts are around these days.”

“Is that so?” she grinned.

But Jack was solemn. “It is, Miss. I should know; I’m trainin’ with the Civil Defence Corps now.”

“Is that so?” she repeated, no longer teasing. “Oh, bravo, Jack, that’s wonderful news.”

“I’ll be done school this spring. I’ll get a job, just til I turn seventeen, and then I’ll enlist. Bagh- I mean, Mr. Buckle- he says it’ll help to have a military background, when I go to apply to the police force.” Jack scuffed his shoes against the cobblestones, playing it cool. As if broaching his career plans wasn’t his goal in this entire conversation.

Chummy was very much in favor of police work, being the wife of a sergeant and all. She was simply thrilled for Jack. She asked after his prospects. How were his marks in school? Did he have any family members on the force? Had he considered a police apprenticeship, instead of rushing off to battle, as it were?

Jack told her that he needed to serve in the army before considering anything else. “Mr. Buckle says it’d look soft not to.”

 _Soft?_ Chummy thought. _You’re just a boy, Jack!_

It seemed that Jack’s primary career mentor was Fred Buckle. Fred had served in the Second World War in the Pioneer Corps. He wore many hats in Poplar, including Nonnatus handyman, and officer in the Civil Defence Corps. He’d also been Chummy’s co-leader, or “Bagheera,” back when she’d led Jack’s Cub Scouts pack.

Fred meant well, but his advice was outdated. There wasn’t a war on. They’d even done away with the mandatory National Service a few years ago. And Peter’s station had had a handful of apprentices; they’d all shaped up quite nicely. It was entirely unnecessary that Jack should enlist, when there was another path towards his dreams. One that was more direct- and much safer. Chummy thought of how her father and his officer friends used to refer to soldiers of Jack’s age and background. ‘Scum of the earth.’ ‘Cannon fodder.’

 _No, not Jack,_ her heart pleaded.

She pulled a notepad and pen from her duffel coat pocket, and jotted down her telephone number.

“You must pick my husband’s brain,” she told Jack. “Give us a ring sometime, starting after the third week of February; that’s when I hang up my nurse’s cap again. I’ll have a nice roast waiting for you both. Or toad-in-the-hole if you prefer.”

Jack reddened beneath the streetlamp. “But Miss, I- I can’t impose-“

“Nonsense, Jack. This is how one makes connections. Besides: Sergeant Noakes did his National Service in Palestine, _and_ he’s worked with police apprentices.”

She pressed the scrap of paper into Jack’s wool gloves. _Probably hand-knit by his mother,_ she thought.

“I’m quite sure that he can illuminate both the paths before you.”

\-----

The winds of change blew strongest when Chummy stood before the call board at Nonnatus House. For the duration of the South Africa mission trip, it read something like this:

 **1st out:** Nurse Mount  
 **2nd out:** Sister Mary Cynthia  
 **Home checks:** Nurse Noakes  
 **District rounds:** Nurse Busby

Patsy and Sister Mary Cynthia swapped continually between first and second call, but otherwise, the board never changed. It was just the four of them. Nonnatus House was usually manned- well, womanned- by almost a dozen midwives. It amazed Chummy that their skeleton crew was holding down the fort so well.

But then, the workload just wasn’t what it used to be.

In the mid-1950’s, Nonnatus House averaged about ninety home births a month. Skimming the log book now, Chummy could see they were down to less than half that number. It seemed home births were now old hat. There was a new generation of mothers coming up, born after the workhouses had closed. They lacked the deep visceral fear of institutions- hospitals included- that had kept their mothers and grandmothers home in all but the direst of circumstances.

There might soon be fewer births, overall. Late last year, a contraceptive pill had been introduced on the NHS, though it was only to be prescribed to married women. Chummy noticed an overbalance of postnatal visits compared to her antenatal ones, as if the birth rate was dropping perceptibly over just a few months. When she thought about it, she could almost feel the winds of change breezing through her hair.

Or perhaps that was just a fatigue-induced hallucination.

They were only _just_ holding down the fort. After all, they were never more than two labors away from having to second a midwife from St. Cuthbert’s. Nurse Delia Busby was technically seconded to them, though it was easy to forget because she’d boarded at Nonnatus for some time now. She was a hospital nurse, who had taken four weeks’ leave to pitch in alongside her housemates. Her ward matron had given her blessing, saying Delia would be “gaining unique experience.”

“So far, I’ve mostly gained muscle mass in my quadriceps,” Delia joked one evening as they all cleaned up from clinic. “And an appreciation for having patients waiting mere feet away, instead of miles. I don’t know how you girls do it all!”

Sometimes Chummy didn’t know either. Eight half-day shifts per week, plus two afternoons of clinic? She was only keeping up thanks to the Vespa, Myrtle, a thermos of black coffee, and what Peter called “a nice afternoon kip.”

There was no point in going home between her morning and evening rounds. It didn’t matter if her boys were colicky and coughing, or perfectly content with Nan; the minute Chummy walked in the door, they clung to her. They only cried even more when she had to leave them for the second time in a day. So instead she took luncheon with the Nonnatans, before putting her feet up in the convent sitting room. She’d put an egg timer on the end table- and on rough days, an ice water bottle on her tum.

One day she was so exhausted that she slept through the egg timer. She awoke to a knobby, sallow hand firmly shaking her upper arm.

Sister Ursula smiled tightly down at her. “I’m afraid it’s time to rally, my dear. Remember 2 Corinthians 12:9: _And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.’”_

Sister Ursula had been sent from the Mother House in Chichester, to serve as director of Nonnatus House in Sister Julienne’s absence. She was the one who called St. Cuthbert’s whenever they required backup, and who stayed behind during clinics to keep an ear on the telephone. She was always seeking ways to improve efficiency. She had Mrs. B., the cook, move hot meals from luncheon to supper, so that the nurses weren’t “weighed down” in the middle of the workday. She pored over street maps in her office, rearranging Chummy and Delia’s rosters to minimize miles traveled. Patients’ timing preferences be darned.

Chummy didn’t mind Sister Ursula terribly. She’d had matrons at school who were far more frightening. Take luncheon, for instance. At Roedean, Chummy could never ask for seconds without being served a cutting remark about “maintaining one’s figure.” But at Sister Ursula’s “frugal luncheons,” Chummy was encouraged to have a second sandwich- or to pack one for her afternoon tea.

“We must all take what we need to keep our strength up. There is much work to be done,” Sister Ursula proclaimed.

“Rather,” Chummy agreed.

Patsy usually wasn’t the type to grumble behind people’s backs. But one day in the sluice room, Chummy happened to comment that Sister Ursula wasn’t so bad. Patsy’s nostrils flared. She hastily turned on the autoclave. Its hissing camouflaged her own from any eavesdroppers:

“Of course _you_ don’t mind her. You don’t have to live with her! And she doesn’t mind you because you’re a volunteer. As long as your work pays for the scooter repairs- which I’m sure it has five times over- then you can do no wrong!”

“Well, she can be rather… Spartan,” Chummy admitted. “And I do wish that she would be kinder to Sister Monica Joan.”

According to the East Enders, Sister Monica Joan had delivered their babies and nursed their sick “for ‘alf a century” before retiring in the early 50’s. According to Sister Monica Joan herself, she was “four score and ten years of age.” But as far as Chummy and her friends knew, she’d been saying that since at least 1955. Her precise age, like so many things, was made grand and mysterious through her use of lofty language.

Sister Monica Joan had earned the right to her eccentricities- and to an idle retirement. When it suited her, she would make handicrafts for church fetes, or tend the convent garden, or entertain the children at clinics. Also when it suited her, she would skive off to watch television, read and write poetry in her cell, or sneak baked goods from the convent kitchen. For the most part, the Nonnatans indulged her.

Sister Ursula did not.

“But Mrs. Turner has tasked me with sending supplies!”

Sister Monica Joan spread her arms before the coffee table. It contained several large cardboard boxes, balls of crumpled-up newspaper, two leftover Christmas cakes, and a child-size set of leg braces. Sister Ursula stood before her with crossed arms. Sister Monica Joan tilted her head haughtily as she looked up at her from the settee.

“These provisions are much needed by the fledgling mission on the veldt!”

Sister Ursula arched a heavy eyebrow. “Barring a diabetic emergency, confections are never _much needed,_ Sister. And as for the orthoses, surely it would be more efficient to contact a supplier in Johannesburg?”

“One might be surprised, actually.”

The nuns blinked quizzically at Chummy, who stood in the sitting room doorway with her nurse’s bag still in her hands.

“Sorry. Just came in to drop off the notes from my evening rounds. Couldn’t help but overhear.” She smiled bashfully. “When I was a girl, Mater would order her favorite silks from the retailer in Manchester, even though the supplier was just north of us, in Kashmir. Such was the horrid state of the post in India. It was just as fast, and much more reliable, to have things sent from another continent rather than from a few hundred miles away!”

Chummy’s nervous chuckles were met with silence. Sister Monica Joan gave her a polite smile, vaguely recognizing an ally. Sister Ursula’s expression was inscrutable. It was she who spoke first:

“Thank you for that… delightful anecdote, Nurse Noakes, but I’m afraid the Order cannot spare the expense. Let us pray that the postal service of 1960’s South Africa is superior to that of 1930’s India.”

"It is not their postal service that concerns me, but their prejudices! For the boy is Black!" Sister Monica Joan cried.

But Sister Ursula glided out, pretending not to hear. Sister Monica Joan drew back into herself, shaking. She pressed her lined lips in on each other. Chummy sat beside her on the settee and picked up one of the leg braces.

"Did he have polio, Sister?" she asked gently. “The boy to whom you’re sending these?”

She nodded. "The scourge will soon be eradicated, but its young victims must carry on. Young Master Turner has benefitted greatly from good nutrition, and skilled physiotherapists. …I fear the boy on the veldt will not be so fortunate."

"Well," Chummy decided. "He's fortunate today. Because I’m going to make Pa cough up the shipping costs.”

She raised her eyebrows playfully.

“I daresay we can even send the Christmas cakes!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Weshallc for catching my Americanisms in an earlier published version of this chapter!


	4. Rhoda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chummy is called upon to help Rhoda Mullucks in a crisis.

“And he says, ‘These M.C. nurses, eh, luv? All it takes is one stiff breeze to knock ‘em over.’ And our Glad, she says, ‘You call _that_ a stiff breeze? I can do better, and I ain’t even had beans today!’ Well Mike got a kick out of that, I can tell you. Nearly tore out his stitches laughin, he did. By the time he mended up, them two was thick as thieves. He asked if he could write her from the front lines. And the rest, as they say, is history.”

Chummy was pushing the pram down Burdett Road. Freddie and Davey were both freshly bathed, and dolled up in sailor suits beneath their winter coats and caps. Myrtle walked alongside, regaling them with the story of how Peter’s sister met her husband. The timeless tale of ‘injured soldier meets army nurse’, with a twist of Cockney humor.

It was late February. The Nonnatans had returned from South Africa; Chummy had hung up her nurse’s cap. Tomorrow Myrtle would return to Walton-on-Naze, and Chummy would stay home with her boys once again. Today they were heading to Violet Buckle’s haberdashery, so that Myrtle could stock up on her bobbins, ribbons, and local gossip. Then it was on to luncheon at an auntie’s house, where Myrtle fully intended to “show off” her littlest grandsons.

They passed by the local grammar school as the morning bell rang. Chummy spotted a young girl in uniform, walking briskly _away_ from the school.

“What-ho, Belinda!” she called. “One hopes you’re not skiving off!”

Chummy barely knew Belinda Mullucks. In fact, she only recognized her because she was the spitting image of her mother. They both had dark hair, and faces that looked like they’d been rigorously scrubbed of both dirt and affectation: with ever-pink cheeks, blunt features, and direct gazes.

The Mullucks attended the same church as the Noakes. Rhoda, the mother, was in the Poplar Choral Society with Chummy and Peter. People said that the choir was the only thing Rhoda Mullucks still did for herself. It was the only time all week that she was parted from her youngest child. Baby Susan was nearly a year old, and still Rhoda kept her bundled tightly in blankets- and even tighter in her arms.

 _Poor Rhoda,_ folks murmured behind her back. _And that poor child._

Belinda stopped still before Chummy and Myrtle. She made no excuse about a forgotten sack lunch or gym uniform. Instead she asked, “Aren’t you a nurse?”

“Why yes, I am,” Chummy replied.

“Can you come with me? I need your help.”

Myrtle patted Chummy’s elbow. “Go on, love. You catch up with us later. You know the way to Vi’s, and Vi knows the way to our Edith’s.”

Belinda led Chummy north, back the way she and Myrtle had just come. The Mullucks lived in the same neighborhood where the Noakes had lived when Freddie was a baby. Long terraces of two-up two-downs walled in narrow, tidy streets. Belinda walked with great purpose. Chummy wondered what was the matter.

Was baby Susan ill? Chummy had never seen Susan unwrapped, much less examined or treated her. Luckily, Dr. Turner and his wife Shelagh, a nurse, had flown home from South Africa last week. Chummy knew that the Turners took great personal responsibility for Susan’s care. If Chummy needed to refer Susan to them, they would drop everything for her.

Or was it Belinda who needed help? Chummy’s thoughts jumped to one’s first monthly. Belinda was about the right age, if on the younger side. What if no one had prepared her? Her poor mother had so much on her mind…

After about half a mile, Belinda glanced back to make sure Chummy was still following her. “It’s my mum,” she explained. “She’s sick to her stomach. She won’t say what’s wrong, only that it’s not catching. She sends me and Perry off to school and tells us not to worry. But I can’t not, Nurse. It’s been weeks now, and she just keeps gettin’ worse…”

Chummy didn’t know which house was the Mullucks’, until Belinda stopped and opened the unlocked door. Chummy followed her in. They heard Susan wailing in the kitchen at the back of the house. Rhoda sat on the staircase, slumped in a loose and ginger fetal position.

“Belinda, you see to Susan. Call for me if you need help,” Chummy instructed. Belinda obeyed. Chummy climbed up and took a seat on the step below Rhoda.

Rhoda Mullucks was a proud woman. She kept up appearances, with her bright silk blouses, floral perfumes, and meticulous bouffant. But now she was in a nightdress and housecoat that smelled of stale sweat. Her hair was flat and greasy. A wastepaper basket sat at her feet, empty except for a few trails of saliva. Her usual flush complexion was replaced with a yellowish, papery look.

 _Liver cancer?_ The thought came to Chummy unbidden. Her mother had died of the disease. But she focused on the patient in front of her now. There were other possibilities, after all.

“Good morning, Rhoda. I say, you have a lovely home.” (This was true. The Mullucks’ décor was cheery and modern. The place was tidy and dusted, despite Rhoda’s current state.) “It’s Nurse Noakes. From the church choir?”

“I know that.” Rhoda’s voice might have been indignant, if it wasn’t so small. _At least her faculties are in working order,_ Chummy thought.

“Belinda asked me to pop in, give you a once-over.”

“What about Susan?” Rhoda rasped.

The baby had stopped crying. Chummy called down into the foyer. “What-ho, Belinda! How’s the littlest Mullucks getting on?”

“She was just hungry,” came the reply. “I’m giving her mushed banana.”

The mere mention of food sent Rhoda scrambling for the wastebasket. Chummy brushed Rhoda’s hair back, taking the chance to feel her forehead. She didn’t have a fever. But she radiated anxiety, and her skin was very dry. Chummy was building a hypothesis.

“Rhoda, when was the last time you had something to drink?”

“And kept it down?” Rhoda asked grimly. “Yesterday, I s’pose. Not a lot.”

“When did you last have a bite to eat?”

She just closed her eyes and leaned against the wallpaper.

“And, Rhoda, if I may… When was your last monthly cycle?”

Rhoda began to shake. Her face pulled, and she gasped a few dry sobs. “I’m sorry,” she whimpered.

Chummy frowned. “What ever for?”

“Susan. She needs me. I can’t have another…”

“Never mind that now, Rhoda. Susan needs you well. And for that, we need to get you fed and watered any way that we can. I’ll call Doctor-“

Rhoda’s eyes flew open. She caught Chummy’s wrist in a crushing grip. “No.”

“Come come, Rhoda. You know you can’t keep on like this-“

“I won’t take any pills,” she said raggedly. “I swear. I’d sooner lose this one than take any pills.”

If anyone had a right to fear pills, it was Rhoda Mullucks. Chummy understood that. But Rhoda’s condition was dire. If the women’s shared suspicion was correct, then Chummy knew there was a good chance that the Mullucks would lose Rhoda before Rhoda lost the baby. And if they were wrong, then they needed to find the correct diagnosis as quickly as possible.

Chummy picked up the little gold cross she wore on a necklace. She took a deep breath, then took Rhoda’s hands in hers. She held two fingers to the inside of each of Rhoda’s wrists. It was an old trick for seasickness. Chummy learned it from her Ayah, on the ship from India. It wouldn’t cure Rhoda. But it might soothe her, calm her down enough to listen to reason. It also allowed Chummy to check Rhoda’s pulse; it was fast and faint.

“Rhoda, I think you may have a condition called hyperemesis gravidarum. It’s what happens when morning sickness calls in the heavy artillery. It’s very serious; I think you realize that. But you won’t need any pills. We’ll bypass that troublesome tummy altogether, by giving you fluids through a needle in your arm.”

“It won’t hurt the baby?”

“No. It’s an old technique, tried and true. Thousands of mothers and babies have come through it unscathed. And you won’t even have to go to hospital. You can stay in the maternity home, at Dr. Turner’s surgery.”

Rhoda nodded. “They’re good people, the Turners.”

“The very best,” Chummy agreed. “Now. Let’s sit you somewhere comfortable while I ring the surgery.”

Rhoda moved to stand, but her legs shook, and her head bobbed limply. Groaning, she let Chummy scoop her up like a child, and carry her downstairs.

\-----

Chummy called the Turners’ surgery from the pay phone down the street. Shelagh promised they’d be ready when Chummy and Rhoda arrived by cab.

“I’d send Patrick to fetch you in the car, if we weren’t so busy picking up after the locum,” Shelagh said in her breathy brogue. “But at least let me call Mr. Mullucks at work for you.” 

Chummy smiled to herself. The Turners really were the best sort of people.

She called a cab, then returned to the Mullucks’ house. Rhoda was resting on the settee. Chummy went into the kitchen. She praised Belinda for her quick thinking that morning. She explained what was happening, but avoided mentioning the maternity home, or Rhoda’s suspicion of pregnancy. That news wasn’t Chummy’s to break. She did tell Belinda that her mother would probably have to stay at the surgery for several weeks.

“Do you think you could stay here alone with Susan?” Chummy asked.

Belinda sighed heavily. “S’pose I’ll have to, won’t I, Nurse? Dad’s got work. Perry’s too young, and a boy and all. He could bring my schoolwork home, though… Will my mum be better before exams week, d’you reckon?”

“Gosh, Belinda. I only meant for today, not for the duration! Your mother tells the whole choir how hard you worked to get into grammar school. We can’t have you jeopardizing your studies. Surely you have an aunt who can watch Susan during the day, or a neighbor?”

Belinda shook her head. She counted off on her fingers: “Neighbors don’t hardly talk to us no more. Auntie Ava lives in Harlow. Auntie Effie’s busy selling Avon. And Auntie Jean would never take Susan- she still thinks Mum and Dad should’ve put her away.”

Chummy looked at Susan. She sat up on her own in her high-chair, bright-eyed and babbling, like any other child her age. She had big blue eyes, wispy blonde curls and soft white cheeks: a little angel’s face. Belinda had tried to wrap her up when Chummy came in, but Susan had squawked in protest. She was thoroughly enjoying her rattle, thank you very much. And her freedom from the blanket cocoon.

The women at choir murmured metaphors behind Rhoda’s back. Some talked of God losing the stitch when He knitted this little one together. Others spoke of flower buds stopped short by a late frost. Perhaps they used these images to brace themselves, in case they ever saw Susan unwrapped. Perhaps they were steering their vivid imaginations away from darker paths.

Chummy needed no such sentimentality. She’d seen much more gruesome sights in her nursing career. Susan was calm and clean; she wasn’t injured or ill. In fact, she seemed to be as healthy as one could hope for. Considering she had no arms or legs.

Susan’s little pink feet sat at odd angles, directly in front of her nappy. A trio of fingers sprouted from each shoulder. She was trying to pick up corn flakes from her high-chair tray. She twisted her little body, grunting with effort. The rattle slipped from her other hand and fell to the floor. She startled, then whined straight at Belinda as if it were her fault.

Belinda smiled and tapped her sister’s nose. “Silly Sue,” she teased.

Chummy bent down and retrieved the rattle. “Whoopsy-daisy,” she sing-songed. As she handed the rattle back, Susan caught Chummy’s fingers in her grip.

Chummy did pause, very briefly, in shock. But Susan’s fingers were so much like any other child’s: small, strong, and sticky from breakfast. Chummy smiled, and wiggled her fingers beneath Susan’s.

She smiled back.

“You won’t have to stay home with Susan,” Chummy promised Belinda. “I know someone who can look after her.”


	5. Susan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chummy moonlights as a nanny, and discovers that one of the hardest parts of caring for a thalidomide child is dealing with strangers' reactions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains (in dialogue) an outdated term and possible slur for people with Down Syndrome. It's said by an unpleasant character, and it is accurate to the time period. Still, I wanted to let readers know that I do not in any way endorse the use of that word in the 21st century.
> 
> On a lighter note: Thanks again weshallc for helping with the brand names! Seriously you guys, I sent her a message like, "I need a ubiquitous baby food. Like Gerber, only British." She totally had my back. :-D

After seeing Myrtle off to Paddington Station, Chummy spent that Saturday shopping. She was stocking up for a very special little houseguest. She bought Lifebuoy, Sunlight, Fairy, baby powder, gripe water, bottles, teething rings, dummies, flannels, nappies, and safety pins. She also had a list of Susan’s favorite things, scribbled on a _Breathe Your Way to Serenity_ pamphlet by a grateful Rhoda. Chummy made sure every flavor of baby food, every brand of teething biscuit, every board book that Rhoda had suggested, all landed in her shopping trolley.

Peter was not impressed. “Now if the Soviets drop the big one, we won’t even have to go to the shelter. We’ll just hole up in the basement and live off Cow & Gate for a year,” he grumbled Saturday evening. When he came home from work on Sunday and found his wife scouring the house from top to bottom, he told her point-blank to stop.

“You’re over-preparing again. You know how you do, Camilla. And it’s not even for the Mayor this time, or Princess Margaret. She’s a ten-month-old baby!”

“But that’s just it. Susan’s precisely old enough to experience acute attachment anxiety. She’s never been away from her family a day in her life. I know she’ll be distraught no matter what I do. Still, I can’t help but want everything ship-shape for her.”

“She doesn’t need all that,” Peter pointed out. “She only needs you, well-rested and up for the challenge.”

Bernie Mullucks, Susan’s father, was even more nonchalant than Peter. When Chummy answered the door on Monday morning with Davey on her hip, Bernie observed:

“Well ven, your little sprog’s about Susan’s size, inn’e? Just feed ‘er the same things and play the same games you would wiv ‘im, an’ she’ll be alright. Don’ worry, she’ll kick off if somethin’ don’ suit!”

He pulled Susan from her pram and tried to set her on Chummy’s other hip. Susan did, indeed, kick off. With very little in the way of limbs, it was difficult for Chummy to get a good grip on the squirming child. She had to sit Davey down on the floor and take Susan with both hands. It was like grabbing a highly indignant sack of potatoes.

When Bernie shut the front door behind him, Susan’s fussing turned to wailing. And it wouldn’t stop. A rattle, a jar of mushed peas, or a game of Dicky Birds might just distract her for thirty seconds. Then she’d suddenly look shocked to find this big, anxiously-smiling stranger in front of her, and she’d fall to pieces again. She took three naps that day: or rather, she cried herself to the point of exhaustion three times. Within an hour she’d wake up, wriggle and fuss quietly as she got her bearings, and then ‘kick off’ once more.

Susan’s foul mood wore off on Davey- and one could hardly blame him. But Freddie was quite the helpful little soldier. The three-year-old was proud to be tasked with fetching flannels and bottles for Mummy. As he marched purposefully through the house, Chummy heard him chanting to himself:

“ _Susan, Susan, baby girl Susan…_ ”

She’d tried to explain to him over the weekend. They would be having a guest over: a little girl named Susan, who was born without arms or legs. Freddie didn’t seem to hear the ‘no arms or legs’ part. Instead he was fixated on the fact that Susan was a girl. He kept asking if they had any ‘girl toys’ for Susan. Chummy assured him that baby toys would suffice.

As their first week with Susan wore on, the worst of her tantrums receded into the morning hours. By sheer trial and error, Chummy began discovering the little girl’s tastes. She liked teething rings that had been chilled in the ice box. She liked mushed peas and blueberries, but not carrots or peaches. (At the moment, anyway.) She liked the pram, but not the baby swing. If Chummy had to soothe Susan but was too busy for a walk in the garden, she’d push the pram around indoors like a bally fool. Not that she really minded; any workable plan of action was a good one.

Susan didn’t like to sit facing Chummy, but she loved watching the boys. Again, Chummy was too overwhelmed to really mind. In fact, she engineered a careful settee setup to bring them all a much-needed moment’s peace. Chummy sat with Davey on one knee and Susan on the other. She held a teething ring up to Susan’s mouth, since Susan’s hands didn’t reach far enough to hold it herself. Both babies sat facing away from Chummy as she bounced them up and down. Freddie stood before them, putting on a show with finger puppets.

“You like Pinky?” Freddie asked Susan, poking the pig finger puppet right in her face.

Susan shrieked. The teething ring clattered to the floor. Davey picked that exact moment to scoot around and try to climb up Mummy. Chummy had suspected it when his bottom went warm a few minutes ago. Once he stood up, she knew for sure: Davey was in dire need of a fresh nappy. But first she had to leave him on the settee while she moved Susan to the play pen. She couldn’t leave Susan alone on the settee; on the off-chance that she rolled off, she’d have nothing to break her fall.

Freddie ran up to the edge of the play pen. “Leave Susan be for now,” Chummy ordered.

Freddie turned around, jutted his lip and stamped his foot. “She. Needs. _Girl toys!_ ”

“Young sir, that is not how we speak to Mummy. Now. Susan needs peace and quiet,” Chummy said, as both babies began to wail. “And you need to take a time out. Go stand by the coat rack, take a deep breath and count five-potato.”

Freddie stomped off to the foyer. Chummy took Davey and headed through the kitchen and back to the laundry area. Every clean nappy in the house had been sitting on the drying rack for six hours now. She hadn’t found the time to fold them and put them away.

Once Davey was done and (talcum) dusted, she went to the foyer to retrieve Freddie. He wasn’t there. Then she heard a noise upstairs. It sounded like several small objects clattering to the floor.

Freddie was in his parents’ room. He’d pulled open the bottom drawer of the dresser and was using it as a booster step to reach the top. He’d flung aside the Brylcreem, hair brushes, lipstick tubes and old photographs. He reached for a doll sitting back against the mirror. It was a gift from Sister Monica Joan to Chummy. She was handmade, with black felt for skin, black yarn for hair, and a little sundress made of indigo cloth.

“ _YOUNG SIR!_ ”

\-----

There were plenty of legitimate reasons to be upset with Freddie. One doesn’t climb on furniture. One doesn’t go AWOL on time-outs. One doesn’t go into Mummy and Daddy’s room without asking. One doesn’t touch Mummy and Daddy’s things without asking.

But privately, Chummy knew: she was upset for reasons beyond all these.

That night she dreamed that she was on a very big ship. Or perhaps the ship wasn’t so big; it was Chummy who was small. The top of the deck rail came up to her chin. She held a doll tight against her- but it wasn’t the doll from Sister Monica Joan. This one was made of untreated calico, and wore a pink, Indian-style skirt and blouse.

Chummy climbed up onto the lowest rung to get a better view. A large, tight hand pulled her back. She cried out as the doll slipped from her grasp, toppled through the railing and fell down and down, into the darkness and out of sight. Mater’s voice filled the air, like cloying perfume in a gilded stateroom:

_Don’t embarrass me, Camilla. It was only a doll. You’re too old for that sort of thing anyway._

\-----

The Turners had stabilized Rhoda with IV fluids during her first weekend at the maternity home. They’d also confirmed the diagnosis of hyperemesis gravidarum. Susan’s little brother or sister was due in mid-September. Rhoda would likely improve enough to be discharged by the end of March; but they had to wait and see. It was possible that she would need to stay in the maternity home for the duration of her pregnancy.

Bernie Mullucks was cordial to the Noakes, if not particularly helpful. He hadn’t even known Susan was teething that first week. Chummy had to remind herself that not every father was as attentive to his children as her Peter was to their boys. Bernie was a decent man. He didn’t mistreat his wife and children. He made a good wage, and he didn’t take _too_ much of it straight to the Hand and Shears. He had to bring Susan by at the crack of dawn to make it to work on time. If he often brought her without giving her breakfast first, was that really so bad? If his breath grew more malodorous with the passing weeks, and he winced and clutched his head when the children were noisy, could one really blame him?

As the winter winds and rains subsided, Chummy leapt at every opportunity to take the children on an outing. She and Freddie needed to hold their cabin fever at bay. And the babies enjoyed riding in the pram together- so long as one of them didn’t amuse themselves by poking the other in the face. Susan especially loved reaching for things in the shops, or wiggling her hands and feet in the fresh air.

Chummy had resolved not to swaddle Susan, weather permitting. When people asked- however tactlessly- about Susan’s deformed limbs, she answered patiently. After all, Chummy herself had known only the broad strokes until recently. It took several weekend visits to the maternity home before Rhoda entrusted her with the full story.

“Sometimes Mother Nature makes mistakes.” For the first seven months of Susan’s life, that was the only explanation Rhoda was given. Little did Rhoda- or even Dr. Turner- know, but the specialists at the London were alarmed by the rising incidence of this particular “mistake.” Children with deformities like Susan’s used to be one in a million. By the time Susan was born, in early 1961, orthopedic specialists across the nation had scores of patients like her. All were under the age of three.

In November 1961, a letter to the medical journal _The Lancet_ linked severely shortened limbs, and other serious birth defects, to a drug called thalidomide. Its British brand name was Distaval. Thousands of GPs across the UK, Australia, and Europe scoured their patient records and corroborated the horrifying truth. A popular sedative, touted as safer and less addictive than its competitors, had instead caused severe deformities when taken early in pregnancy.

When strangers asked Chummy what had happened to Susan, she answered, “Before she was born, her mother took a bad pill. Have you heard of Distaval?”

She hoped that by explaining things now, she was sparing Rhoda and Susan some stares and questions in years to come. She also hoped that the people- mostly women- that she spoke to would run home and purge their medicine cabinets of any remaining Distaval. The drug had, of course, been hastily pulled from the market. The Turners had diligently followed up with all their patients who had been prescribed it. (As did all good GPs across the country, one would hope.) But the press had been oddly silent.

Distaval was first sold in the UK in April, 1958. It remained on the market for three and a half years. The Turners had identified three “thalidomide babies” from their practice records alone. (One was even more severely affected than Susan, and had died shortly after birth.) There must have been hundreds of affected children throughout the country. Countless babies had been spared by sheer luck- including both of Chummy’s sons. So she could certainly sympathize with many strangers’ reactions:

“Oh, the poor little lamb. Although it doesn’t seem to bother her none. Bless her!”

“My Gawd, I think I took that once! The doctor gave me something to help me sleep, about two years ago. I didn’t take it long- made me feel funny, it did. But imagine if I ‘ad… My Gawd…”

“Well what are they gonna do about it? Can’t they make her false arms and legs? And make Distillers pay for it too, the heartless shills! _Three years_ on the market, you said? Cor! How could they _not know?_ ”

Righteous anger, simpering pity, even speechless shock, Chummy could understand. The only reaction that she couldn’t fathom was disgust. Susan was a bright little thing, healthy and happy; she was even quite pretty. At this young age, caring for her was just as much of a joy, and hardly any more trouble, than caring for any other baby. Yet some people would announce on sight that she ought to be put away!

It started on their very first outing together. On the walk to Victoria Park, Freddie said that he wanted to build a sand castle. Chummy had packed half the world in the hold-all, but not a plastic bucket and spade. So they stopped in a toy shop in Old Ford Road.

The babies were both content for the moment, so Chummy left them outside in the pram. She did this sort of thing all the time- as did every mother in the East End. She thought nothing of it. Nor did she think anything of leaving Susan in her little hand-knit outfit, with no blankets covering her stunted limbs.

Freddie was deciding between a blue bucket and red one, his mother crouched beside him to help with the deliberations, when a woman in curlers and headscarf approached them.

“Pardon me, love,” she said, pointing out front with her cigarette hand. “Are they your two out in the pram? One of each, both real little ‘uns- twins, I reckon?”

 _Twins?_ Chummy smiled to herself. The thought was oddly tickling. “Yes. Are they alright?” she replied.

“There’s places you can put the girl, you know.”

“S-sorry?”

“You know. One of them care homes? My cousin’s neighbor’s got a little boy who’s mongoloid. The place he’s in’s got a big garden for the kids to play in. They let family visit seven days a week. It’s real nice, not like them places used to be.” The woman shrugged. “Hope you don’t mind me saying.”

Chummy drew herself up to her full height. She did something she usually tried to avoid: she looked down her nose at the other woman.

“But I do mind you saying. Actually.” There was a blue-blooded chill to Chummy’s tone that surprised even her.

The woman backed off, her hands up in a gesture of truce. “Alrigh’ ven! I was only sayin’. You’ve got two healthy boys. It’s not fair to them, keepin’ that poor thing at ‘ome!”

The woman stomped out, scowling back over her shoulder as she went. Freddie hid behind the legs of his mother’s flannel trousers. The shopkeeper took a sudden interest in some business behind the counter.

Chummy was motionless as she watched the other woman’s retreat. She paid extra attention as the woman passed Davey and Susan in the pram. Not that Chummy actually thought she’d harm either of the babies. But then, she hadn’t thought that people offered complete strangers unsolicited advice to institutionalize their children.

No wonder Rhoda kept Susan wrapped up all the time.

“Mummy?” Freddie tugged on her trouser leg. She took a deep breath, and let the feeling of his curls between her fingers bring her back down to earth.

“It’s quite alright, young sir.” She smiled down at him. “What do you say we pick out a nice dolly for Susan, before we head on to the park?”


	6. Flowers for Camilla

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter mentors Jack Smith on his career options.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Content warning:** This chapter mentions the Holocaust, and the detention of Jewish refugees trying to enter Palestine after World War II.

At eight months, Davey was starting to develop a real personality. And a cheeky one at that. When Peter recoiled upon opening his nappy, the baby _laughed_ at him.

“Camilla! Could you bring us more flannels?”

He could hear his lovely wife clomping about the kitchen. She sighed in exasperation, much of it self-directed. “Can’t it wait? I’ve misplaced the bally timer for the toad-in-the-hole.”

“Well don’t take too long. He’s just done an explosive poo, right up to his armpits.”

“There’s no need to be _graphic,_ Peter!”

Peter had only been trying to make Freddie laugh. The boy was moping in the corner of the sitting room. Something about “Mummy’s fwowers.” When Peter came in from work, Freddie had tried to dodge past him out to the garden. Camilla had ordered Peter to stop him; the garden was a veritable mud pit today. Peter would have liked to help Freddie with… whatever he was upset about. But he hadn’t had the time yet. He’d been conscripted to nappy duty the minute he came in.

Camilla was just a tad frantic. She got this way before they had company- unless it was someone they knew so well that they no longer “counted” as company. The Mullucks had stopped counting after the first two weeks of Camilla minding Susan on weekdays. Nurse Trixie Franklin, Camilla’s best friend, hadn’t counted as company since Peter and Camilla were married. When Trixie returned last week from her extended stay in South Africa, Camilla immediately invited her for dinner and a very long chat, with no thought to the state of their home.

But tonight Jack Smith was coming for dinner, and to talk to Peter about his career prospects. Hence the overpowering smell of Sunlight, the muddy garden being off-limits, and Camilla working herself up. It was entirely unnecessary, in Peter’s opinion. Jack was a sixteen-year-old boy. The house could be falling down around their ears, and he wouldn’t notice as long as there was a good dinner in it for him.

Trouble was, the cooking always worried Camilla the most.

She’d come to Peter’s rescue with more flannels. Davey’s prolific poo surprised her, too. She crouched beside Peter on the sitting room floor to get a better look.

“Didn’t I tell you?” he teased. “What have you been feeding him?”

“Only the-“

_Boom._

“USUAL!” she shrieked as she fell backward onto the carpet. She, Peter and Freddie were riveted on the kitchen. A noise had come from there like a small, contained explosion.

“I think that was the oven,” Peter observed.

Camilla’s eyes widened in horror. “Oh, great Jehoshaphat. I must have forgotten to-“

_Boom._

“-VENT the-“

_Boom. Boom._

“-SAUSAGES!”

She sprang to her feet and hurtled back into the kitchen. Peter and Freddie listened anxiously; even little Davey fell quiet. They heard the oven click off, and Camilla moan in dismay.

“Oh, what have I _done?_ The inside of the oven is _covered_ in batter. Dinner is absolutely _ruined…_ ”

Peter grinned at Freddie. “When toads explode!” he announced. This time, Freddie did laugh.

“It’s not _funny,_ you two.”

“It’s alright, Camilla. We’ll just pop down to the chippy instead.”

“And let half of Poplar listen in while you tell Jack about Palestine? Peter,” she pouted. “That simply won’t do. I want you to feel free to speak plainly. I was even going to take the boys up for their baths posthaste after dinner, so that you wouldn’t be guarded on my account.”

Peter was touched. He had to admit; he’d felt roped into this dinner in the first place. Camilla hadn’t asked Peter’s permission before giving Jack license to pick his brain. As their dinner date approached, Peter may have grumbled once or twice about Camilla having an agenda.

“What do you want me to tell him? That war is hell? Though technically I wasn’t in a war, so how should I know… Should I tell him his mother will cry when he ships out?”

“I merely want you to tell him the truth, however you see it,” she’d answered primly.

He was just now realizing that she truly meant that.

The doorbell rang.

Jack Smith stood on their stoop in his Sunday suit, clutching a small bouquet of jonquils. “They’re for Miss- Missus Noakes,” he blurted when Peter answered the door. “My mum made me bring ‘em.”

Freddie slipped past Peter, grabbed Jack’s hand, and pulled him over to the camellia by the bay window. The flowers had been felled last night by a late frost. Freddie scooped one of the biggest blooms- over a foot across- up out of the mud. 

“Fix fwowers?” he asked Jack.

The teenager looked a bit helpless. “Erm, sorry. I think they’re done for.”

The camellia was Peter’s gift to Camilla on their anniversary last year. Now Peter realized why Freddie had been going on about ‘Mummy’s fwowers.’ But the boy had gotten muddy after all- and now he was starting to cry. One step forward, two steps back.

Camilla came to the doorway with her glasses askew, a hastily-rewrapped Davey on her shoulder, and a brown smudge on her stockings. Peter would say that was mud if Jack asked. Not that he would. As Camilla thanked him for the jonquils, Jack stared up at her with a blissful, kind of stupid smile.

Peter had always reckoned Jack had a schoolboy crush on Camilla. (Not that he could fault the kid for having good taste.) There was Jack’s stint as Camilla’s self-appointed bodyguard, and the way he used to leap to do her bidding when she led his Scouts troop. If nothing else, the Noakes’ wedding day had left no question. After the reception, Jack had followed the happy couple to Paddington Station on his bike. He’d waved and pedaled like mad for nine miles while they waved sheepishly from the back of the car.

While Jack pinked, Davey squirmed, and Freddie sniffled miserably, Peter and Camilla worked out a new plan. Camilla would get the boys cleaned up. (And pop these delightful jonquils in a vase of sugar water, of course.) Meanwhile Peter and Jack would take a long walk around the neighborhood, getting their “shop talk” out of the way before dinner. When they returned, the five of them would head down to the chip shop together.

“Nice day,” Peter said lamely as he and Jack set out. Last night’s frost had thawed out early, leaving the world clean and fresh. The sky was liquid blue, the sun white gold, the air full of the smell of damp earth coming alive.

“Nice neighborhood,” Jack replied, just as awkwardly. Drakefield Estate was built by private investors, and consisted of two-story homes with private gardens. Both characteristics made it a rarity in the tightly-packed, working-class East End. It was a new development: so new, in fact, that the far street was still under construction. Peter felt conspicuous as he and Jack passed a developer’s advert:

**Drakefield’s Estate Agents. For Sale from £2,995.**

_Ours didn’t cost quite that much,_ Peter felt like confessing. _That’s the starting price on the four-bedroom, detached homes._

But then again, it might motivate Jack on his career path if he thought a humble sergeant with the Metropolitan Police could afford a three-thousand-pound house.

“So. Why do you want to be a policeman?” Peter asked.

“I want to protect people,” Jack answered readily. He scuffed his shoes and added: “And it beats dock work. My dad says there won’t be enough jobs for all the boys my age, now they’re getting in more machines for the unloading. Besides, I was good at Scouts, so people told me to join the Civil Defense Corps. Now I’m good at the Civil Defense Corps, so people say I should join the force. It just seems to fit.” He shrugged.

“It ‘just seemed to fit’ me too,” Peter told him. “My dad was a bobby. He made Inspector, retired with a nice pension. He always wanted the same for me, and I had no complaints.”

“But you had to serve in the Army first. You all did back then.”

“Yeah, we did. I thought I’d end up fighting the Germans. That was the war on when I was a kid. But they surrendered when I was your age. There was talk of us sending reinforcements to Japan, but then they surrendered, too.”

Jack let out a low whistle. “So you barely missed it. Shame.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“Why?”

“’Cos I have colleagues who fought in Europe or the Pacific. They’ve all got lists as long as your arm of boys they knew who didn’t make it back. I spent nineteen months in Palestine. You know how many were killed in my battalion?” Peter asked.

Jack shook his head.

“One.”

“ _One?_ ” Jack brightened. “So it’s gotten safer? My mum says she’ll cry every day if I enlist. I can tell her she doesn’t have to, if all I’m really doing is traveling, and learning drills and discipline!”

Peter dug his thumbs into his trouser pockets, slowing his stride. He took a deep breath before replying:

“You could tell her that. And you might be right. Then again, you never know what you’re getting into until you’re there. I know men who went to Korea, to help the Americans with their ‘police action’. Turns out it was full-on war, just by another name. And they say that when the Great War broke out, everyone thought the boys would be home by that first Christmas.”

Peter and Jack had fallen into that rather masculine walking pattern of well-matched strides, no touching, eyes straight ahead. But Peter turned briefly and saw Jack biting his lip. The message was getting through. Camilla had mentioned Jack was a good student, albeit at the comprehensive school. He would know how many Christmases the Great War soldiers spent in the trenches.

“Even if you’re lucky enough to end up somewhere with low casualties, that doesn’t mean the work is easy. Mentally, I mean. I knew officers in Palestine who’d come there straight from Europe. Some of them actually preferred the war. ‘At least we knew who we were fighting, and why,’ they said.

“I served with the British police in Haifa,” Peter went on. “We were on a constant lookout for assassins, terrorists, mobs. Ordinary-looking people, out walking the street, who’d gladly kill us just ‘cos we were British.”

“What’s wrong with being British?” Jack demanded.

“Nothing. Except our leaders had made promises they couldn’t keep. They told two groups of people- the Jews and the Arabs- that they could have the same country. Only they mixed like oil and water. They started to hate each other, and to hate us too.”

“But that wasn’t your fault.”

Peter fixed his gaze on the smooth macadam, tidy hedgerows, and weak low sun of English suburbia. If he blinked, he might find himself back among the sun-bleached concrete and sandstone, the palms and the citrus trees. He’d smell the salt off the Mediterranean, and feel his uniform sticking to him as he kept order on the docks. He’d see the prestigious Red Berets, stony-faced as they dragged illegal immigrants off the boats. Women collapsing in hysterics. Men cursing them in German and Yiddish. Hollow-eyed, undersized children who didn’t make a sound.

“ _They’ll be safe in Atlit, and well-fed,_ ” Peter’s superiors had insisted. One got the sense they were convincing themselves as well as the new recruits. “ _It’s all quite humane. And it’s only temporary, until things are sorted. Most unfortunate, after how they suffered so terribly in the German camps. One understands their fear. But it’s not our fault. Now chin up, chaps. Can’t look soft, you know; the gangs are always watching._ ”

“In Haifa…” Peter sighed heavily. “I learned to keep calm and follow orders, even in the face of suffering. It’s served me well in accidents, abuse cases, fights. But I also learned to see everyone I crossed paths with- even old folks and children- as imminent threats. That’s no way to walk a beat in your own country. To be a good policeman here, I had to unlearn as much as I’d learned.”

“You’re saying it wasn’t worth it, then?” Jack asked.

How could Peter answer that? He planned on asking God when he got up there. _All that fuss over one little country- was it worth it?_ Though perhaps he’d wait until he’d already entered heaven before asking. He didn’t fancy having the pearly gates slammed in his face.

“I’m saying that my country called me to arms, and I answered. I’m proud of that. But service takes a toll on a man: even if he gets a ‘safe’ posting, like I did. Your generation’s lucky to have a choice. You owe it to yourselves to think it over.”

“But won’t the other bobbies who’ve served think I’m less of a man if I haven’t?”

“Some might, but that’s on them. I wouldn’t,” Peter said quietly. “Besides, the army’s not the only way to be a good man, Jack.”

They were coming back around to the Noakes’ house. Camilla was in the front garden with the boys. Davey babbled in the parked pram, while Freddie studied the camellia from his spot on his mother’s hip.

“Do you see this little pink spot? It’s a flower bud,” she was explaining. “There’s a tiny baby flower in there. Soon it will grow up nice and big.”

“More fwowers?”

“Yes. Precisely. Do you know, young sir, some plants only make flowers once a year? But camellias make new flowers again and again, all throughout the spring. It’s one reason they’re my favorite, rather.”

“More fwowers,” Freddie repeated, sounding satisfied. “ _Big_ fwowers. For Mummy.”

“Yes,” said Camilla as she nuzzled Freddie’s cheek. Peter smiled watching them.

“One way to be a good man,” he told Jack, “Is not wanting to make your mother cry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to _Farewell to the East End,_ Chummy's police officer husband is a World War II veteran. But by the time I read _Farewell,_ I'd started publishing _Just Beneath Her Heart,_ which establishes Chummy's birth year as 1926. I wanted to keep my headcanon that Peter is 2 years younger than Chummy- the same age difference as the actors that portray them. But this makes Peter too young to have served in World War II unless he lied about his age, and then he would have been a scared kid at the tail end of the war- not the hero pilot his _Farewell_ counterpart was...
> 
> Long story short, I decided to stick with my own headcanon, and write a different career backstory for Peter that would explore moral ambiguity in a changing world. An indispensable source in helping me write this chapter was "Out of Palestine: The Making of Modern Israel", by Hadara Lazar. (English translation, Atlas & Co, 2011.)


	7. Follow Her Lead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trixie and the Noakes attend the Worth wedding. Later, Peter and Camilla discuss their family's future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jenny and Philip's wedding as portrayed in this chapter is purely fictional, based on their characters in the show _Call the Midwife_. It is not intended to reflect the real-life couple's wedding in any way.

Philip Worth and Jennifer Lee were married in central London on the last Saturday of March, 1962. The church had wide stained-glass windows, and lots of high arches in different shapes. Camilla called it “arts and crafts” architecture. Jenny wore a rather simple floor-length dress with a narrow waist and a big, rustling skirt. Trixie called it “very Princess Margaret.” She walked down the aisle to a classical strings piece that sounded nice enough one minute, but dark and dissonant the next. Later, at the reception, Camilla and Trixie were still trying to put their finger on it.

“Who’s that weird Russian composer they both like?” Peter thought aloud. “Maz something? Or Muz…”

“Mussorgsky!” the women cried in unison. “Oh, brilliant, Peter! That must be it!”

The reception was at Claridge’s. Over a hundred guests were seated at large circular tables in a high-ceilinged ballroom with marble floors. Chandeliers glowed in triplicate in the floor-to-ceiling wall mirrors. The centerpiece candles sparkled off the gold-rimmed drinking glasses and the waiters’ silver trays. The air was filled with laughter, chit-chat, and a live band covering the likes of Bobby Darin and Ben E. King.

It was all a bit overwhelming. Peter could hardly believe they were only twelve miles from home. He thought of the hum of the washing machine, the hiss of Camilla’s iron, and the creaking springs of the boys’ toy rocking horse. He thought of sticky kisses, grubby hands, and of unkempt curls dive-bombing into scatter cushions. It all seemed worlds away.

What must it feel like for Trixie, then? Usually a party like this would be right up her alley. But she’d just returned from another world indeed: rural South Africa. She was still bubbling over with stories of her time there. Every other song reminded her of socializing with her patients. Certain items on the menu reminded her of the local cuisine. Peter could relate. He and Camilla had been the same way when they got back from Sierra Leone- despite having an even greater adventure looming. Still, he didn’t think Trixie’s tales of low-tech cesarean sections were the best conversation topic over Cornish hen cordon bleu.

“Oh yes, I read about that mission in the Order’s last donor bulletin,” remarked a woman across their table. “The curate proposed to one of the nurses, didn’t he? That wasn’t you, was it, dear?”

Trixie flashed her trademark brave smile. “No. But I’m friends with the couple. And I couldn’t be happier for them, really.”

The band struck up “Crying in the Rain.” Trixie stared out across the ballroom, straight through the couples on the dance floor and over to the bar. Camilla turned to Peter, her brow furrowed.

“Follow my lead,” she whispered. Then, at somewhat above her normal volume: “Gosh, we do love the Everly Brothers, don’t we Peter? Shall we dance, then?”

“Guess we shall.” They both stood up.

Camilla glanced around, then affected surprise. “I say! Is that Fifi Throckmorton-Cahill at the table in the corner? I haven’t seen her since we roomed together at Florence Nightingale! We simply must catch up. Oh, Peter, do go on without me. Perhaps Nurse Franklin would care to have this dance?”

“I’d love to,” said Trixie, suppressing giggles.

Camilla wore a forced, awkward smile. She had pinked from the neckline of her dress clear up to her pearl earrings. She ushered her husband and best friend to the edge of the dance floor, then took off for the far end of the reception hall. She was too sheepish to even venture a glance back at them.

“Erm, sorry about that,” Peter fumbled. Trixie laughed openly now.

“Your wife is a terrible liar. But I do appreciate her intent. I’m all for humoring her, as long as you don’t mind?”

“Course not.”

Trixie took Peter’s outstretched hand and glided out onto the floor. Peter stumbled behind her. He had just enough experience to know that overthinking would start him off on the wrong foot- perhaps in more ways than one. But he couldn’t help it. _Try not to tread on those high heels,_ he told himself. _Try not to sweat so profusely. Don’t stand too close- but not so far apart as to seem stilted. Don’t look_ anywhere near _that neckline. Or that hemline…_

“Shall we stick to a simple box step?” Trixie suggested. “I’m sure you two have mastered that at least.”

“We have, but- erm- Camilla usually leads,” Peter admitted. “We mostly just dance at home, and with her height, you know, it’s easier…”

“Well if you ever fancy a return to Poplar’s social dance circuit, I’m sure an evening class at the community center will get you sorted out.”

“Maybe we should,” Peter mused. “Lest I start finding novelty vegetables in my work lunches again.”

They shared a chuckle. Peter’s feet were starting to find their way without his constant mental supervision. Trixie glanced towards the far corner of the reception hall. Peter followed her gaze. He saw Camilla smiling and waving at them both, looking pleased as punch. His palms suddenly felt drier; Trixie’s hand on his shoulder wasn’t quite so heavy.

“Chummy’s been telling me everything she was up to while I was in Africa: subbing at Nonnatus, helping the Mullucks. Sounds like she’s keeping awfully busy.”

“Well, you know her,” Peter grinned. “Always brimming with beans.”

“How old is Davey now?” Trixie asked.

“Eight months.”

“Is that all? Goodness. She’s bounced back so well.”

“She’s a wonderful mum to our boys. And always looking out for others, too. I couldn’t be prouder.”

“You really are a happy little family, aren’t you?”

Trixie’s voice pitched high with hope. Peter felt the full weight and heat of her touch again. He broke out in another wave of sweat.

“So tell me. Have you two talked any more about adoption?”

\-----

Peter had broached the subject a week or two after Davey was born. Camilla was still in hospital at the time. The doctors and nurses all said that she was healing wonderfully. She braved walks to the lavatory, and later around the hospital courtyard, without complaining or requesting more pain relief. She asked to see the baby often. She always smiled when they placed him in her arms.

But sometimes she’d cry as she held him. Not soft, free-falling tears of joy; but hard-wrought tears that pulled her face long. She wouldn’t make a sound. Nor would she talk to Peter about it. 

When he tried to cheer her with talk of their new house, or how excited Freddie was to meet his baby brother, she would shut down. Her warm brown eyes would go cold, hooded with pain. She would turn away from him. She’d answer his plying- his pleading- with a simple “yes” or “no.” No “righty-ho,” no “oh Lawks,” no “steady on.”

In fact, Peter didn’t hear a single plucky, posh turn of phrase in the first few weeks of Davey’s life. It was Camilla’s way of escaping, without making the Herculean effort to rise from her bed. It was her way of pushing him away without having to argue.

“I’m so bloody tired, Peter, now can I just have some peace?”

These were the harshest words she ever spoke to him in those dark weeks. It was one day when he just couldn’t stop asking her what was wrong. He didn’t ask how she planned to find peace lying there, staring at the far wall, ruminating on the daughter she’d dearly wished for but would never have. She hastily backtracked with a series of “sorrys,” brittle and raw, breaking into sobs like waves against rocks.

Peter had waited until next time she’d seemed almost herself. A few days later she was sitting up and smiling, commenting on the get-well cards and the baby’s little gurgles. He’d swallowed hard for courage before remarking:

“We could always adopt, you know. A little girl. It’s just- I want to give you everything, Camilla-“

She’d reached out and clasped his hand. Hard. “Perhaps,” she’d said huskily. “When we’re ready.”

 _I’m not ready,_ was the clear message. _Not even to entertain the thought._

After the Worth wedding, their family life continued humming along. Camilla took the boys to the shops and the park, swapped babysitting duty with Mrs. Caplan and Rhoda Mullucks, helped organize church fetes and socials. Peter’s work schedule permitting, they had their evenings reading in bed together, Choral Society practice, and even those dance lessons Trixie had suggested.

Through it all, Peter watched Camilla carefully. When a church friend needed to hand off her baby daughter to fix her stocking, Camilla took the child without hesitation. But parentheses pulled the sides of her mouth after she gave the child back. Sometimes her fingernails went white as she held her cross for evening prayers, or she’d cast a lingering look at the indigo-cloth doll on the bureau. Still, she’d pull herself together to practice dancing with Peter, or to recount the boys’ daily antics to him.

The sadness was still there, but it wasn’t as vast and heavy as before. Peter was starting to think she was ready- at least to talk about it. Then one day, he came home to find Camilla at her trusty Singer. She was sewing a small child’s outfit in pink.

“What’s that you’re sewing?”

“A dress for Susan Mullucks,” she replied. “Rhoda has to alter everything for her, especially in long-sleeve weather. I thought a reprieve from all that tailoring would make a better gift for Young Madam’s first birthday than just another trinket from the toy shops.”

“Good idea,” Peter said, his heart sinking a little. He turned to go and check on the boys, when:

“What did you think I was sewing?” Camilla asked.

“I dunno. Perhaps… something for another little girl.”

“I haven’t forgotten, you know,” she said quietly. “What you said to me in hospital last year. About adopting.”

“I know. Trixie mentioned you told her.”

“Did she indeed?”

Camilla sat back from the Singer and held out her hand to Peter. He took it and sat down beside her. She smiled as he rubbed his thumb along the side of her hand.

“You were such a dear to offer,” she said. “But I understand if you didn’t really mean it. Emotions running high, all of that.”

“I did mean it, Camilla. We’ve seen the Turners with Angela. They love her like she was their own. If they can do it, why can’t we?” He moved his hand up her arm, then cupped her chin. “That is, if it’s what you want?”

She closed her eyes and smiled, relishing his caress. He felt her start to nod, slow and small at first, then hearty and emphatic.

“Yes. Yes, I think I do.” She drew a careful breath. “But not just yet, perhaps. Davey’s still a babe in arms, and-“

As if to prove her point, Davey woke up and began squalling in his play pen in the next room. “STOP IT!” Freddie screeched. The parents grinned knowingly. Camilla stood up, dabbing her eyes on her jumper sleeve.

“We’ll talk more later,” she said. “And pray about it, of course.”

“Of course,” Peter replied. His heart was doing excited flip-flops. Some women would use a call to prayer and contemplation to put the brakes on things. But Peter knew his wife. Once the Almighty was recruited to her schemes, the pair of them never tarried.

He was perfectly happy to follow her lead.


	8. On Mothers and Daughters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chummy's hopes- and fears- about adopting a daughter begin to grow. A touching scene for the Turner family helps the former to outweigh the latter.

"Bigger than Ben-Hur!" Or so the posters claimed. For the grand opening of Poplar's new Recreation Ground, the Buckles had organized a "chariot race" through the district's streets. Banners and a starting platform baked in the hot July sun before Nonnatus House. Phyllis Crane took the stage, counted off, then fired the starting gun.

Delia Busby led the charge with a magnificent paper mache sword. Sister Monica Joan waved a Union Jack as Sister Winifred pushed her in a cushioned carriage. The Girl Guides galloped off on broomstick horses. The Cubs pushed a cardboard Trojan horse on a wheeled platform, with Fred Buckle standing alongside. He wore a toga over his Bagheera uniform, and a paper mache centurion's helmet. Local mothers brought up the rear guard, pushing streamer-bedecked prams. Chummy had both her boys in her pram, along with two-year-old Angela Turner.

"Mummy! Too fast! Scares Davey!" whimpered Freddie as the younger two children squealed with joy. Chummy slowed her pace without comment. They loped into the new little park at the tail end of the crowd.

Trixie's Keep Fit class was already in the middle of a demonstration on the green. As soon as Chummy helped them disembark, the children began mimicking the women's movements. Fingertips to the sky, then bend at the waist for a toe touch. The little ones giggled as they overbalanced and fell on their bottoms. Davey, especially, did more falling than toe-touching. But he was undeterred; it was all part and parcel of learning to stand on his own two feet.

At a year old, Davey was as big and tall as the statistically average eighteen-month-old. He had his mother's deep brown eyes, and a mop of golden curls reminiscent of his uncle Al's. He took two regular daily naps and a wide variety of mushed food. He babbled incessantly. He'd crawled and climbed into every imaginable nook of their home. Lately, he might even take a step or two while holding Mummy or Daddy's hand. He was a bonny little thing, that was for sure.

Keep Fit didn't hold the children's interest for long. There were dandelions to blow out, pebbles to collect, and cardboard Roman paraphernalia to play in. There was also a stand selling ice creams. Three little voices _very_ emphatically suggested that Chummy join the queue.

She bought a single ice cream in the largest size. The moment she had the paper bowl in hand, half a dozen little hands were tugging at her skirt. She pulled them along to the nearest picnic table, put on her stern voice, and managed to get them sitting nice and orderly. As she gave them each spoonfuls of ice cream in turns, she felt a bit like a mother bird feeding her nestlings. _Sans_ regurgitation, that is.

She'd grown accustomed to caring for three children at a time. First she'd had Susan Mullucks this spring. Now she was on the babysitting rota for little Angela Turner, while her mother was on bed rest in St. Cuthbert's. Chummy had also taken to mending Timothy and Angela's clothes in their mother’s absence. Shelagh probably would have welcomed a bit of sewing to pass the time. But Dr. Turner was determined to bring nothing to his wife's bedside but light reading and sunny chit-chat.

Sometimes while Chummy worked on Angela's clothes- the whimsical florals and pink gingham, the ruffles and lace- she imagined making clothes for a daughter of her own someday. Such daydreams no longer pained her, now that Peter had brought up adoption again. Chummy no longer had to steer herself past the baby-pink fabric bolts in the haberdashery, or the doll aisle of the toy shop. When her dreams in the night turned to childhood memories of silk and calico, of dolls' tea parties beneath the banyan trees, she no longer awoke with a heavy heart. Instead, she let Peter overhear her humming Hindi lullabies as she went about her morning.

For now, Chummy held the hope of a daughter gently, as a 'maybe-someday.' It was lovely just to dream again. Though she sensed that Peter might be a bit more eager to make dreams a reality.

"The nursery's about half the size of Freddie's room," he pointed out one day. "Almost like there was meant to be two kids in one room and one in the other." He was prone to similar 'offhand' comments about the width of the Vauxhall backseat, the size of the kitchen table, or the suitability of their backyard for a three-seat swing set. Especially on the days when Susan or Angela came over to play.

But Chummy still had some praying to do- and thinking. What sort of mother would she be to a little girl? After six brothers, two sons, and the Cub Scouts? Girls were more complicated creatures than boys. Softer in some ways, yet tougher in others. Willful yet sensitive. Chummy wasn't sure she'd know how to manage that. She only knew what she _didn't_ want to become.

As a young girl, whenever Mater criticized her, Chummy used to salve her ego by telling herself: _When I have a daughter of my own, I'll be much nicer to her._

_I won't tell her to stop boring Grandpapa with her stamp collection, when he asked to see it in the first place._

_I won't strike her on the mouth for trying to speak a language that she hears every day._

_I'll let her play outside with her brothers; dirt washes out, after all._

_I'll let her have seconds at supper. Especially if her tummy is rumbling._

_I won't fret and moan at the tailor's over how tall and broad she's getting. And I certainly won't complain to all my friends about her being 'on the shelf'!_

But lately, in her darker moments, Chummy wondered if her failure to produce a daughter was some sort of punishment for the ruminations of her youth. Perhaps she ought to have been grateful. After all, Mater never gave up on trying to mold her into a lady, despite her painfully slow progress. There were all those instructional letters when she was at Roedean; their summer holiday together when Chummy was fourteen; and the endless finishing schools. Goodness, Mater even took Chummy to Norman Hartnell for her wedding outfit, even though she was “an utter lost cause” at that point.

It wasn't easy raising a girl. People said that mothers and daughters seldom understood each other. Lady Cavill and Sister Monica Joan didn't speak for decades after the latter took holy orders. Jenny Worth had kept entire love affairs from Mrs. Lee's knowledge. And poor old Mater. She had seven children survive infancy, and the only girl of the lot was a catastrophic misfit in their family's world. A misfit who then ran off to practice the wrong profession, marry the wrong sort of man, raise her own children in the wrong sort of place…

Perhaps Chummy ought to cut her losses. People said that the Lord only gave one as much as one could handle. For many years, she had believed Mater's proclamations that she was destined for spinsterhood; but now she had a wonderful husband and two healthy boys. She had been given so much. Surely it was wrong to want more?

She could tell herself that all she wanted was another child, one with whom she could share a gentler sort of affection. Someone she could teach to sew while the boys were out playing football. Someone with whom she could share confidences, perhaps impart some sort of feminine wisdom. Someone who would grow up to become her closest friend. After all, some mothers and daughters understood each other better than anyone else in the world. Myrtle and Gladys, Peter's mother and sister, came to mind.

She could tell herself that she didn't care if her little girl someday got married in a white dress, or a gray suit, or if she never married at all. She could tell herself that she wouldn't care, wouldn't judge, wherever life took her daughter- so long as she was a good person.

She could tell herself all these things. It still didn’t banish the fear that, one day, she'd find herself shut out of her daughter's life. The girl might scream it down the stairwell as a teenager. Or perhaps she'd let a lifetime of actions speak for themselves, as Chummy had with Mater:  
 _You never understood me! Frankly, I don't think you ever tried!_

Chummy was pulled from these broodings by a fuss at the park entrance. The Nonnatuns and the Keep Fit ladies were forming a happy, chattering swarm. "Did you come here straight from St. Cuthbert's?" she heard a woman exclaim. And then another: "Oh, you're looking so well!"

Chummy knew exactly what was happening; the Turners had given her advance notice. She scooped Angela up onto her shoulders, playing the sycamore tree to the little girl's Zacchaeus. She pointed towards the crowd.

"What-ho, Angela! Who's that over there?"

Angela was hesitant at first. "Mummy?"

"Yes! It's Angela's mummy! Shall we go and say hello?"

"Mummy," Angela repeated, surer this time. "Mummy!"

Chummy shifted Angela down to her hip and strode across the park. Angela's brother Timothy ran ahead, parting the crowds for them. As they drew close, Angela tried to launch herself off Chummy's hip and straight into Shelagh. But her father intercepted her.

"Gently now, Angela. Remember what we talked about."

"Oh, Patrick," Shelagh sighed. "Just let me hold her!"

Shelagh took her daughter in her arms. Angela's little arms and legs wrapped Shelagh so tightly that her knees and elbows stood out in white. Dr. Turner hovered, watching for the slightest sign of strain from his wife. She only closed her eyes contentedly as she planted little kisses on Angela's head, lingering to sniff the girl's hair.

"Mummy," Angela murmured. "Mummy, Mummy, Mummy…"

Chummy scrambled for her handkerchief. There was no simpler or more precious sight. The anxious separation of the past few weeks was forgotten in one golden moment. Worries about the future- for Angela, for Shelagh, or for the child that Shelagh carried- were all miles away.

All that mattered right now was that they were together.

 _If the Turners can do it,_ Peter had asked, _Why can't we?_

Why couldn’t they, indeed.


	9. The Blanket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While the world holds its breath during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Noakes help the Turners to move house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter combines the contents of chapters 9 and 10 on ff.net ("Prayers and Knitting" and "The Blanket.") The new combined version has been edited for brevity. Well... at least a *little* brevity.

A dark chill descended upon Poplar, permeating the atmosphere for days on end. It had nothing to do with the autumn weather, and everything to do with what young Timothy Turner called "this row between the Russians and the Americans."

Of course, the world was chockablock with international "rows." One could hardly go into a tizzy every time the newsstands screamed "CRISIS IN…" But this time felt different. The streets of Poplar were too quiet. Usually during a spot of international turmoil, one overheard lifelong East Enders scoffing at the fuss: "This ain't the Blitz!" But not this time.

This time, the Civil Defense Corps were out advising their neighbors to stock up on tinned foodstuffs, and to paint their windows white to "deflect the heat of the blast." This time, the electronics shops had all their window-display televisions tuned to world maps, overlaid with arrows and headers like "FLASHPOINT: CUBA." Even the chip shop by the park, which usually kept their radio tuned to the medium-wave pop stations, was now fixated on the grim analyses of the BBC. One day, when Chummy and her boys stopped in for lunch, they were replaying a speech that President Kennedy had made late the night before:

_“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response…”_

Chummy was secretly glad when Davey began hollering for more tomato ketchup, drowning out the rest. Just as she was glad on the walk home, when Freddie took one look at the electronics shop, saw they weren't playing _Pinky and Perky_ or _The Lone Ranger,_ then huffed and pulled his mummy along.

That night she gave the boys their bath, rinsing crumbly leaf bits from the park out of their hair. She got Davey into his pajamas. Freddie dressed himself, and put on his tartan dressing gown that he was so frightfully proud of. (It was a perfect miniature of Peter's.) They climbed into Freddie's bed, and she read them "Pop Goes the Diesel" for the umpteenth time. Then they knelt together by the bed for their prayers.

_Now I lay me down to sleep_  
I pray the Lord my soul to keep  
If I should die before I wake  
I pray the Lord my soul to take 

"Amen!" Freddie beamed. He must have kept his eyes closed throughout. He must not have seen Mummy swallow hard and reach for her cross necklace at the line, _If I should die before I wake._

Peter was on night shifts this week. On the one hand, Chummy was relieved that she didn't have to put on a cheery face for him at the end of long days. On the other hand, it was awfully lonely, sitting up by herself at a time like this.

She couldn't listen to Peter's country western music, or their favorite cinema soundtracks; they pulled too much at the heart. Her Bach and Vivaldi LPs would agitate her mind. But she'd found an old LP of plainsong hymns. It was at the bottom of their collection; she'd had to blow dust off the sleeve. She kept it on the turntable all this week. It reminded her of evenings at Nonnatus House: hearing the nuns at vespers down the corridor.

She was too distracted to read, and too alone to look through the adoption materials that she’d been collecting from various agencies. So she passed the time by knitting. Her latest project was a blanket for the Turners' impending arrival.

While she worked, she thought of all the women, since time immemorial, who had passed the time much the same way. She wondered who was the very first woman who had the epiphany to pull some fibers through an animal bone. She imagined women knitting even in crypts, bomb shelters, and refugee camps. To busy one's hands and quiet one's mind. To make the cold, hard world just a bit warmer and softer. Even when it looked as if all might be swept away, before the next child was even born.

And indeed: over the course of history, many _had_ been swept away. But others had survived, despite the politicians' bloviations. No matter how this latest diplomatic "row" turned out- even if London was lost- some of humanity would survive. Some women would live to knit another evening. More babies would be born. Chummy was sure of it. She remembered the story of Noah and the ark. After the great flood, the Lord had placed a sign in the sky promising, "never again."

\-----

The Turners moved house on the last Sunday of October. Chummy had offered to watch Angela while the rest of the family directed the movers at the new house. She didn't know when they'd arrive, so she'd skipped church this morning. The house was quiet as she prepared the roast. Peter was sleeping off the last of that week of night shifts. So far, the boys were sleeping in too.

Then the telephone rang. Chummy dashed for it, her only thought to stop the piercing trill from waking everyone else. She answered on instinct:

"Nonnatus House, mid- oh! Bally bugger it!"

"Sweetie that's _my_ line. Or at least the first part is," Trixie giggled.

"Sorry. Old habits die hard."

"It's alright. I'm on call so I won't keep you. I just had to ask: Cluedo, lemonade, gossip. When are you free next?"

"Is this A.S.A.P.?" Chummy had an awful thought. "Is it Sister Mary Cynthia? Is she… unwell again?"

Trixie sighed. Chummy's heart sank.

"We should talk about that, too." Trixie lowered her voice. "She caught wind of the news."

"What news?"

" _The_ news, darling. This… horrid debacle in Cuba. One can hardly blame her for being a bit set back by it." Trixie was practically whispering now. "But I think Dr. Turner and Sister Julienne-"

Chummy heard a rustling, as if Trixie's handset was pressed against something. Then Trixie's voice, oddly muffled:

"Good morning, Sister."

A beat later, clear again but with forced cheer:

"Sorry, Chummy. Anyway. You remember that dentist at St. Cuthbert's that I was telling you about?"

"The redhead with the sports car, yes. Oh, do tell me you've stopped stringing him along!"

"All will be revealed over Cluedo," Trixie teased. "Should I stop by after my rounds tomorrow afternoon?"

"Absolutely," Chummy grinned. Trixie's impatience was rubbing off on her. Something truly exciting must have happened with that redheaded dentist!

But Chummy had to dash for now. Freddie was tugging at her skirt. "Davey’s up," he reported.

The Noakes called it their 'noon rule.' On Peter's weeks of night shifts, Chummy and the boys did their best to keep the house quiet before noon. Granted, today was Peter's day off _after_ a week of nights. But Chummy still tried to keep the noon rule out of courtesy.

She knew Peter had had an especially trying week. The officers were being drilled- quite literally- on their civic emergency protocols. Gallows humor abounded at the station; Peter said a bloke couldn't go to the loo without his mates joking they'd never see him again, that he'd be caught in a most undignified position when the Soviets dropped the big one.

She let the boys play with their trains while she made them breakfast. But they had to keep all wheels on the carpet, not the lino, and abstain from 'choo-choo' noises. Later, she let them run off their excess beans in the back garden, warning them periodically not to shout too loudly.

The Turners arrived at half-past noon, with suitcases strapped to the roof of their Austin. One might have thought they were going on a camping holiday- if not for Shelagh's 37-week bump. Angela ran straight through the house to join the boys out back. Chummy asked the others:

"Can I tempt you to some roast before you journey onwards?”

"We wouldn't want to trouble you," Shelagh said. "We'll just stop in a chip shop for lunch."

"On a Sunday?" Dr. Turner asked gently.

"Oh of course not." She pinched between her eyebrows. "I forgot it's Sunday…"

"That new Indian restaurant in Cotton Street is open Sundays," Timothy offered.

Shelagh turned a bit green. Poor thing! The little Scotswoman was nearly as wide as she was tall, so tired she was mixing up her days, and now her stepson was suggesting Indian food? Chummy was a lifelong fan of a good curry, but even she couldn't stomach anything bolder than _baati_ in her final weeks carrying the boys.

"It's no trouble at all," she said firmly. "The roast will be done in ten minutes. I always make far too much food, anyway.”

Peter was up and dressed now, so it was all eight of them together for lunch. (Nine if one counted the baby.) There was an hour or so of cozy, post-roast sluggishness; then they planned their next moves. Peter was going to take the three little ones to the park. Dr. Turner and Timothy were headed to the new house. Dr. Turner insisted that Shelagh stay behind. He wanted her to rest; instead, she was trying to help Chummy clear the dishes. Chummy would have none of it.

"Why don't you have a sit-down in Peter's lounger? I can pop the footrest for you, if you can't reach the lever."

"I'm not an invalid, Chummy." Shelagh scoffed, pacing the Noakes' kitchen.

"No. You're an expectant mother with mere weeks- if not days- left to go. And you’ve spent all morning packing up a flat."

"I feel fine! I-"

Shelagh stopped short. Freddie and Angela were following her back and forth across the kitchen. They were mimicking her stride: waddling about with their hands on their backs and their tummies jutted out.

"Do I really walk like that?"

"For the time being. You are carrying rather low recently." Chummy smiled gently. "Go and steal a few winks in the lounger. Hostess's orders."

"Husband's orders too!" called Dr. Turner from the foyer. "And doctor's!"

Shelagh rolled her eyes. "You're one to tell me to rest, Nurse Noakes. If I recall, you were 38 weeks with Freddie and still delivering other women’s babies!”

But Shelagh gave in. She was dozing- and snoring- within minutes of reclining the lounger. The others left, and the house fell even quieter than it had been that morning. Chummy put the dishes in a pre-soak. They glided and clinked mutedly beneath swirls of sudsy water. Likewise, all the recent big news and events clunked about in her swirling thoughts.

At this point, she was almost numb to the threat of nuclear war. Two weeks of intense, sustained concern had worn her down entirely. There was still the occasional flash of panic. But she could distract herself by dwelling on the Turners' joy: the new house, the new baby, and the blanket she'd just finished knitting last night.

Sister Mary Cynthia's 'setback', on the other hand, kept floating to the surface of her mind. What was Trixie about to tell Chummy about Dr. Turner and Sister Julienne? Whatever it was, it sounded as if she strongly disapproved. Did she think they'd send Sister Mary Cynthia away again? She'd just spent half a year in Linchmere Psychiatric Hospital. Oh, how everyone had hoped she would be well again…

Chummy's father said that the Army kept "neuroses" cases quiet. They only removed soldiers from the front lines the minimal time and distance needed to "regrow a bit of backbone." Nearly all were then eased back into light duty; most returned to full duty in a few weeks. It was best that way, Pa said: morale would suffer if the men thought that one could earn a ticket home by faking a breakdown. Only the completely shattered, those whose thoughts were disorganized beyond repair, were discharged and sent to psychiatric hospitals back in Britain.

Was Sister Mary Cynthia shattered? Disorganized beyond repair?

\-----

Dr. Turner and Timothy were back within the hour. Apparently, the movers had misread the address Shelagh wrote for them. Most of the Turners’ worldly possessions had been driven to Kent. And Shelagh wasn't the only one mixing up her days: her husband had given the electricity board the wrong date. Their new house wouldn't be connected until tomorrow.

Chummy immediately offered to let the Turners stay overnight in her home. Peter was still out with the little ones, but she knew he wouldn't mind. What else could the Turners do? Wander up West in search of a decent yet economical hotel? Crowd into Nonnatus House with the busy midwives, the fragile Sister Mary Cynthia, and some visiting missionaries to boot? Camp out on the floor of their new house, presently a dark and empty shell?

Dr. Turner explained everything to Shelagh when she woke up. There was teasing and light groaning, some blushing over how Chummy had "already done so much for us today." But there was no real argument. Chummy and Dr. Turner both made it clear that they wanted Shelagh safe and comfortable. Besides, they'd already brought in the suitcases- and Timothy's bassoon. Now that his stepmother was awake, he thought he might serenade them with some practice scales.

The pale autumn sun was angling low when Peter burst through the front door. "Camilla! Turn on the BBC. _Now!_ "

She obeyed, feeling her heart leap into her throat. The little ones clambered past Peter and into the house. Shelagh shushed them with a quaver in her voice. They all gathered before the television to watch- and listen.

“ _…an agreement ending the immediate threat of nuclear war. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev has agreed to dismantle all Russian missiles based in Cuba and ship them back to the Soviet Union…_ ”

"It's over?"

“Just like that?”

“Is it really?”

"Yes! It's over!" Peter laughed. "It's finally over!"

"Peter!" Chummy cried. "You could have _told_ us it was good news! I was all tied up in knots-!"

He took her face in his hands, kissing away her tears as they fell. She was too relieved to stay upset. Soon she was laughing and kissing him back. The Turners were having a similar moment. The little children cried "hooray!" and ran circles around the adults. They didn't know _why_ their parents were so happy, or why Timothy was picking up each of them in turn and spinning them through the air. They didn't care!

"I'll be back in the smallest of moments," Chummy told Peter. His eyes sparkled. He snuck a quick brush of his hand across her bum as she left. But Chummy was on a different wavelength, so to speak. She was off to retrieve her knitting- and her Bible. From upstairs she heard the broadcast continue:

“ _…the U.S. will not invade Cuba and will eventually lift the naval blockade imposed on the island…_ ”

"Shall I play my bassoon?" Timothy asked. "See if I can figure out 'The Star-Spangled Banner' by ear?"

Dr. Turner was acerbic. "Do you have the _range_ for 'The Star-Spangled Banner?'"

They were all still laughing and teasing Timothy when Chummy returned. She'd found and bookmarked the Scripture she wanted. She’d also folded up the blanket, so that only one or two colors were visible.

"I have a gift for the baby," she said, raising her voice slightly. The adults took the hint and shushed the children. "Although, given the most recent news, it seems rather like a gift for us all. But first, if I may: I thought I might read a bit of Scripture that's been of some comfort to me lately."

She looked the men; both were considerably less religious than their wives. But right now, they were nodding to her in encouragement.

She cleared her throat. "Genesis chapter nine, verses fourteen and fifteen:

" _And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud. And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh._ "

She handed Peter her Bible, and then unfurled the rainbow blanket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> John F. Kennedy’s words on the radio in this chapter are from his “Speech to the Nation” made on the evening of October 22, 1962. The same portion of this speech is sampled in _Call the Midwife_ season 6, episode 6.
> 
> The news announcement at the end of the chapter is from a real BBC news brief I found online: "World relief as Cuban missile crisis ends." (October 28, 1962.)


	10. Breathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chummy assists Sister Julienne with Shelagh's labor - until deeply unsettling memories interfere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warning:** In this chapter, Chummy has a PTSD-type flashback to the night that Freddie was born. If reading this would be troubling for you, please rejoin us in chapter 11. Your wellness and peace of mind is more important than any story.

The telephone rang late one gray November morning. It was Shelagh Turner.

“I think this is it,” she breathed. “The cramps have moved ‘round to my back. They’re stronger now, and more regular: only seven or eight minutes apart.”

“That certainly sounds like curtains up time,” Chummy agreed.

“Are you free to pitch in? I haven’t rung Nonnatus yet. I can ask Sister Julienne to bring a second pair of hands if you’re-“ she gasped. “Ohh…”

“Alright, Shelagh?”

“…Y-yes. I’m fine. That was only six minutes from the last.” She laughed weakly.

“Ring for Sister Julienne, and then do try and get comfortable. I’ll be over before you can say ‘knife,’” Chummy promised.

Chummy wasn’t going to deliver Shelagh’s baby, _per se_. Shelagh had chosen Sister Julienne for that honor. And besides: Chummy was frightfully rusty. She’d delivered only two babies since 1959, both while working at the maternity home. One girl had given birth during a snowstorm; the other somehow managed to keep quiet until she was eight centimeters dilated. The rest had been sent to a nearby hospital when their time came.

But midwives and laboring mothers rarely handled home births alone. They needed someone else to boil water, fetch towels, hold the sick basin. Usually this person was the laboring woman’s mother, or sister or aunt. If there were no women relatives nearby, the neighbor women would come running. They heard the groans and screams easily through the thin walls of terraced homes or council flats.

Shelagh was an only child, whose mother died when she was young. Her former Sisters were essentially her women relatives. Since she lived in a detached home, she couldn’t count on the neighbor women to hear. Which is why they’d arranged ahead of time for her to ring Chummy.

Chummy, in turn, rang Mrs. Caplan to let her know she’d be bringing Angela and the boys within the hour. She got her boys into their coats and hats, then walked them over to the Turners’ house. Angela was finishing a fried cheese and tomato soup when they arrived. And Shelagh was polishing off a packet of pink wafers!

“Gosh. Indulging one last craving?” Chummy teased.

“I prefer to think of it as energy for the second stage,” Shelagh grinned.

Chummy took the children to the sitter, then doubled back across Drakefield Estate with a spring in her step. When she reached the Turners’ house again, she found Sister Julienne wrestling a gas and air machine out of the boot of a taxicab. The nun beamed when she spotted Chummy.

“Dr. Turner’s orders! He told me that if Shelagh insists on a home birth, _he_ insists that she have the same pain management she’d have in the maternity home.”

It was all tickety-boo to start with. Sister Julienne examined Shelagh. She thought Baby was most likely in a posterior position; his back was turned to Shelagh’s own back. This could make labor slightly longer and more difficult. But it wasn’t dangerous- not when everything else was textbook perfect.

Shelagh was ready and calm. In fact, the greatest fuss in those first few hours came from her husband. Despite Sister Julienne’s assurances that all was well, and his child’s birth still hours off, Dr. Turner kept ringing the house “just to check on things.”

“I do love him for caring,” Shelagh sighed. “But that’s the third time in as many hours that he’s called!”

“Would you like me to move the telephone elsewhere? Perhaps into the rubbish bin?” Sister Julienne asked impishly.

“Och, no… If we stop answering he’ll just leave work early and come home. And I’ve _told_ him: I don’t want him in the room until the baby’s born.”

“I could guard the bedroom door for you,” Chummy offered. “I think I may actually be a smidge taller than him.”

Shelagh chuckled. She paced the bedroom, slow and tottering, in a tent-like white nightdress. Chummy was reminded of her first stage with Freddie. She could almost hear the banter with the other nurses:

_“Come on, Chummy, on the bed. High, hot, and a hell of a lot!”_

_“No, you absolute beasts!”_

_“Chummy, you’ll have to surrender, or Sister Evangelina will come and do it. And I wouldn’t put it past her to chuck in extra soap!”_

_“Can’t we just… pretend? Send out a chamber pot with a cloth draped over it like a sort of ruse?”_

As she ran the errands surrounding Shelagh’s labor, Chummy found herself put off by the odors. Perhaps that should have been her first clue that something was wrong. She’d always had a jolly robust nose. She used to have no trouble delivering babies in squalid tenements, working between the legs of women who were lucky to have two baths a week. Merely pitching in at the Turner house was downright fragrant in comparison.

But her stomach clenched and turned at the post-enema chamber pot, the Dettol over vomit, the carbolic soap- even the freshly-laundered towels. As Shelagh progressed, the used towels unsettled Chummy even more. They smelled of sweat, urine, blood. No. No not blood. Shelagh was doing well and not yet at the sharp end. There was no blood. Why did Chummy smell blood?

Shelagh’s face was red and contorted. She whimpered and groaned between contractions, and screamed during them. She was still standing. But she leaned on Sister Julienne so heavily, it was a marvel that the aging nun stood straight and calm.

“Just breathe it away, Shelagh,” said Sister Julienne.

 _Breathe it away, Chummy,_ echoed Jenny’s voice across four years. _Breathe it away._

“No,” she whispered.

Sister Julienne looked up. “Nurse Noakes? Did you say something?”

“No. I… No. No I didn’t. S… Sorry.”

Sister Julienne frowned. “Perhaps you’d like to step out for some fresh air, Nurse Noakes?”

Chummy’s feet felt bolted to the floor. A half dozen needs were pulling her in different directions. She couldn’t decide which was the most important. She wasn’t even sure which were real.

_Fresh air. Gas and air. Get more towels. Don’t let them put you under. Make Jenny listen. Listen to Sister Julienne. Go downstairs. Stay here. Run away. Get help. The baby. Help…_

“Nurse Noakes.”

She tried to answer Sister Julienne, but found her lungs pressed flat. She must have stopped breathing…

“Nurse Noakes, we could use more hot water.” Chummy didn’t answer. Sister Julienne grew firmer. “Go downstairs. _Now,_ Nurse Noakes.”

Chummy nodded wordlessly. She left and closed the bedroom door behind her. Through it she heard Sister Julienne, soothing:

“You’re doing wonderfully, Shelagh.”

 _You’re doing brilliantly, Chummy,_ Jenny had said. Only she didn’t feel brilliant in the slightest. She’d never felt such pain. It had become unceasing. No peaks and troughs, no tightening and release. It didn’t feel like contractions at all. It felt like something being ripped out of her… It felt like she was dying…

She held her cross and shook her head, trying to fling off the memory. And the helpless anger. When she’d complained of the pain, Jenny had replied in that coaxing singsong they reserved for their more _dramatic_ patients. It made Chummy wonder if she was just weak: if this relentless, violent pain was somehow normal after all. She’d almost hoped it was. Because that would mean all was well. That would mean Jenny had it all under control…

The striking geometry of the Turners’ modern, half-furnished home went stark, flat and unreal. Chummy felt as if her mind was shrinking back from behind her eyes. Or as if her inner and outer selves were gliding past one another, untouching, like two magnetized plates of the same polarity. She was stumbling down the stairs. She was writhing on a twin bed at the convent. The house was warm and bright. The convent had a cold winter’s night breathing down the drafty old windows.

Where was she? What was she here for? Something about water? The water. Her waters…

She had thought it was her waters. But then, she knew that wasn’t right. She knew before Jenny did. It was too thick, sticky between her legs. It smelled like rust. Iron and oxygen. Her baby’s strength and breath, leaching out of her, and she couldn’t stop it…

The baby. The baby… She had to help the baby… She couldn’t slip under. They told her to breathe deeply but she couldn’t… He needed her… But oh, Lord, the _pain_ …

She heard a scream.

\-----

Patrick had been waiting anxiously all day. Finally, just before teatime, Sister Julienne called him instead of the other way around.

They skipped all pleasantries. “How is she?” he asked.

“Shelagh’s doing very well, Dr. Turner. But I’m afraid Nurse Noakes is struggling. Could you come home and see to her?”

“Yes. Of course. How far along is Shelagh?”

“Six fingers,” Sister Julienne reported. “We don’t need you just yet. But it may not be much longer.”

 _It may not be much longer._ The words echoed in his mind as he drove home. His heart was beating in his ears. When he briefly remembered Nurse Noakes’ “struggle,” he imagined something like a migraine or lumbago. Something easily treated with aspirin, a hot water bottle, perhaps some Horlicks.

Shelagh had prayed so long and fervently for this baby. They’d faced daunting odds and frightening challenges. But ever since they first found the baby’s heartbeat this summer, things had fallen into place. The baby was active and growing. Shelagh was healthy and energetic- feisty to the point of stubbornness, in fact.

Patrick just _knew_ they were both going to be fine. That is, until he found Nurse Noakes standing in his foyer, rocking in place. Between frantic, futile gasps, he heard her whispering:

“The baby… He can’t… I need… No, please…”

He ran upstairs and threw open the bedroom door.

“ _Patrick!_ ” Shelagh cried. “I _told_ you! Not until the baby’s born!”

He took stock of the scene. Shelagh was lying on the bed, red-faced and breathing heavily, but composed and lucid and, well, _indignant_. Sister Julienne was crouched calmly down the business end of things. The gas and air machine was chugging away. There was a heap of damp, discarded towels on the corner of the bed. But the wet patches were all mild-smelling and clear.

“Is everything alright?” he asked, feeling every bit the clueless father and not at all the experienced doctor.

“Shelagh is fine,” Sister Julienne said firmly, even as Shelagh arched her back and wailed. “How is Nurse Noakes?”

Patrick ran back downstairs again.

Nurse Noakes stared right through him. She leaned into her crossed arms. She’d tensed her shoulders and jaw so that the muscles stood out in her neck. She was breathing in small, irregular gasps; it almost sounded like shivering. She croaked out a few words at a time, in brittle whispers. Patrick leaned in close to hear. But he didn’t dare reach out and touch her. Not yet. He knew that stare.

“Jenny doesn’t know… He can’t… can’t breathe… I can’t… No no no please… I can’t… Jenny no… I can’t… The baby…”

 _Jenny._ She must have meant Nurse Jenny Lee. She’d left Poplar almost three years ago now. But Patrick knew: she was there the night that Freddie Noakes was born.

“Nurse Noakes? Nurse Noakes. Can you hear me?” he asked.

She didn’t respond.

“Chummy? Can you hear me?”

Her eyes cleared a little. She nodded. And then she couldn’t _stop_ nodding, tight and frantic. She started hyperventilating-

“Chummy. Listen to me. Your babies are safe. _You_ are safe. I know it feels real, but it’s all just a memory. You’re _safe_ now, Chummy. There is nothing to be afraid-”

Shelagh screamed again. Patrick bit back an oath. Chummy stopped hyperventilating- but only because she stopped breathing at all. Her eyes fixed in place with a look of such terror, Patrick was tempted to turn around. But he knew there would be nothing to see.

“Chummy? Just breathe.”

She kept holding her breath. She started shaking-

“ _Breathe,_ Chummy.”

She gasped like a drowning victim breaking the surface.

“We need to get you out of this house. Chummy? Can I take your hand?”

She nodded. No sooner did he reach for her hand than she practically fell against him.

“ _He couldn’t!_ ” she gasped, “ _Breathe!_ ”

He led her across the front garden and to his car. She sobbed all the way. He was glad. One had to breathe in order to cry.

He helped her into the front passenger seat. Now that he knew she could tolerate touch, he had a curious urge to sweep her disheveled hair back behind her ear. Like he often did with his three-year-old daughter. He’d always found it strange, how trauma flashbacks made frightened little children of even the biggest and strongest of people.

She blubbered as he ran around to the driver’s seat:

“S-sorry! Sorry. Sorry. Sorry… I know. I know it’s not- But it _felt_ -“

“It’s only a memory,” he reminded her.

“I know.”

“You’re safe now. Your boys are both safe now.”

“I know. I… Sorry…”

Her breath slowed and steadied gradually, like a runaway pushcart reaching a plateau.

“Sorry,” she sniffed. “I- I don’t know… I’m such a bloody fool…”

“No, you’re not,” he said softly.

“Sorry, Doctor. Sorry.” She was hoarse and trembling. She still wouldn’t quite look him in the eye. “I don’t… know what happened.”

 _I do_ , he thought.

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” she whimpered.

“Nurse Noakes, you have nothing to apologize for.”

They sat together in the parked car, in the twilight and the quiet. Patrick worked down a lump in his throat. And Chummy breathed.


	11. All Will Be Well

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chummy gradually realizes she is safe. Dr. Turner is a good man. That is all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for any readers who skipped chapter 10 (and my own Chummy-stanning heart) to know that she's going to be okay.

Dr. Turner drove Chummy home and led her inside. She stared around her own foyer as if she’d never seen it before. Half-circle wall mirror. Shoe rack piled with galoshes great and small. Framed photograph on the wall, from the day of Davey’s christening.

“The boys,” she whispered.

“Come again?”

“The boys. My boys.” Her head began to spin again- and with alarmingly little provocation. “They… where… Mrs. Caplan. I have to… What will I tell her?...”

“You don’t have to tell Mrs. Caplan anything,” said the doctor, slow and clear. “I will tell Mrs. Caplan that you’re a bit under the weather. I’ll let her know that Peter will collect the boys, after his shift. And I will leave a note for Peter.” He lightly rapped his knuckles on the sideboard. “Right here, telling him the same.”

“I shouldn’t… he shouldn’t have to… Sorry…”

“It’s alright, Nurse Noakes. I’m sure that Peter and Mrs. Caplan won’t mind. Now. You need to rest.”

They went upstairs. Chummy saw the damask wallpaper. Berber carpet runner. Cylinder pendant lights. A glimpse into the boys’ bedroom. Two low, unmade beds. A wicker hamper. Toy trains, blocks, and animals strewn about. The images were still flat and disjointed. But at least they were familiar and safe. The master bedroom was next. She saw family photos atop every dresser and end table. The bedspread the Nonnatuns gave her when Freddie was born. A Bobby Helms LP sleeve leaning against the record player.

All were testaments to the life she and Peter had built, full of family and friends, love and comfort. The sights calmed Chummy. And with the calm came sudden exhaustion. She curled up on top of the bed, too tired to even pull back the covers.

“Would you like a chloral hydrate?” the doctor asked.

She found it strange that he would ask that, rather than simply order it. She suspected she’d sleep long and deep even without a sedative. But she couldn’t be certain. Her panic at the Turner house had caught her entirely unawares. Who’s to say it wouldn’t leap upon her again?

“Yes. Thank you,” she said softly.

Dr. Turner nodded. On his way out of the room, he assured her: “When you wake up, Peter and the boys will be here, and all will be well.”

He was right.

The first few times that Chummy briefly came round, her mind was blank and her body was completely, blissfully relaxed. She registered the dark of night beyond the window, Peter snoring beside her, and the Artex ceiling swirling before her eyes. Then she fell back into a dreamless sleep, as heavy yet soft as a thick down quilt.

When she finally rose from her bed, the room was suffused with the dim light of an overcast dawn. The alarm clock read 7:32 AM. She’d spent nearly fourteen hours in bed. There was an empty glass on her bedside table. That must have been the chloral hydrate.

She tiptoed into the boys’ room to watch them sleep. And listen to them breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a crisis of writerly confidence after chapter 10. Weshallc once again let me vent to her and bounce ideas around. I credit her with my even _attempting_ to get my groove back since then. ;-) You're the greatest, Weshallc! <3


	12. Called for a Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Christmas card from old colleagues helps Chummy find purpose for the future.

_Freetown, Sierra Leone: October 1958_

The Sisters of Charity, Chummy’s hosts and colleagues, had ties with Anglican churches across the globe. This weekend they were hosting the Baxter family: ‘Episcopal’ missionaries on their way home to a furlough year in the States. While Earl, Mattie, and ten-year-old Ruthie got settled, their hosts built a campfire in the courtyard. They broke out the top-shelf _poyo,_ and even some imported s’mores supplies. After all, it wasn’t every day that the Sisters played host to Americans on holiday. (Or rather: on _vacation._ )

“You know what this reminds me of? The time our Jeep broke down between villages!” Earl declared, his voice as loud and cheerful as his Hawaiian shirt. “We had to camp out in the bush overnight. It was a full moon, and hotter than blue blazes, but you bet your sweet biffy we still had us a roaring campfire! No one’s seen a lion in the Kono district for years, but still, better safe than sorry.”

“The Reverend Applebee-Thornton said the same thing, when we toured the Western Area Rural,” Peter mused. “I enjoyed it, camping out under the stars. Made me feel a bit like the Lone Ranger.”

Ruthie looked up from her marshmallows with sudden interest. “You get _The Lone Ranger_ here?”

“We don’t have a television,” Peter said apologetically. “But you can catch him on the radio, once in awhile. I’ve got some of the books too. You can borrow one if you like.”

“No thanks,” she smiled. “My brother Jim can loan me some when we get to Texas. He’s got a whole shelf for _The Lone Ranger,_ and another one just for books about the Alamo. He’s gonna study history at TCU. Their mascot’s the horned frog, which is Texas’s state reptile.”

The adults chuckled. Chummy squeezed Peter’s hand, and they shared a smile. Now in her eighth month, Chummy found herself observing children more keenly, and wondering what her own child would be like. Her and Peter’s child was unlikely to have Ruthie’s red hair or copious freckles. But if little Bean was half as winsome as Ruthie, he or she would have no trouble making friends.

“Is Jim your only brother?” Chummy asked.

“Nope! I’m the youngest of five,” Ruthie beamed. She counted off on her fingers: “Lily’s twenty-one; she got married last year, and sent us _lots_ of pictures. Then there’s Jim; he’s seventeen. Annie’s fifteen; she shared Mom’s fried cassava recipe with her home ec class. She said it was a real hoot. Paul’s twelve; he doesn’t write us much. Annie says he’s a pain, but I really don’t remember, ‘cause I haven’t seen him since we were little. And then there’s me!”

“We were gonna keep ‘em all with us ‘til they were fourteen. That’s when high school starts back in the States,” Earl explained. “But we were in Kenya, when the Mau Maus came. We got the kids outta dodge ASAP. Sent ‘em to live with Mattie’s sister. But Mattie and me, we couldn’t just up and leave. Not without making arrangements for the flock.”

The nuns nodded knowingly. Chummy squeezed Peter’s hand again.

The Mau Mau rebellion was in the early Fifties, wasn’t it? Maths were never Chummy’s strong suit, but she knew that Ruthie and Paul must have been very small when they left their parents. Only Lily, the oldest, would have been close to that fourteen-year mark.

Chummy gently rubbed her stomach. She could feel little Bean warming up for his or her evening acrobatics. Hormones and work-weariness lowered Chummy’s defenses, and she let her thoughts turn morbid. Imagine having to say goodbye to this little one in just a few short years, not knowing if they’d ever meet again. Imagine having to say goodbye to five children at once.

Earl continued. “Took us almost two years to catch up with ‘em in Houston. We were gonna take ‘em on our next posting. But hoo boy, did they kick up a fuss! ‘We like it here! We like our schools and our friends and growin’ up with our cousins!’ Ruthie was the only one young enough-“

“Earl,” Mattie warned. She was sitting at Chummy’s other side. She could see the pregnant Englishwoman blinking back tears in the flickering firelight.

“Aw, come on, honey. I’m sure the Noakeses understand. You remember the Hawtreys, in Nairobi? ‘Stiff upper lip and all that’? They sent their kids off at what, age five?”

“Six,” Chummy whispered. “Boarding school… starts at six.”

She burst into tears.

“Ohhh, honey,” Mattie cooed, squeezing Chummy’s arm. “Just ignore Earl. He gets carried away.”

“No. It’s quite alright.” Chummy scrambled for her hankie. “Sorry. Bally hormones, that’s all. Sorry. Sorry…”

\-----

_London, England: November 1962_

The Turners had a healthy baby boy. They named him Edward; he was nicknamed Teddy from day one. Shelagh had pulled through in perfect health, as well. Chummy saw them both at Tom and Barbara’s wedding. Shelagh stared down at her little son in her arms, utterly enamored. All the pain that went before was forgotten.

Trixie jokingly called the Hereward wedding “this season’s most exclusive invitation.” There were forty guests at most. The couple had had to bring their wedding date forward on only three weeks’ notice. They’d always wanted Barbara’s father, a minister, to conduct their ceremony. When Reverend Gilbert received a missionary posting to New Guinea, his daughter moved heaven and earth to ensure he could still be there on her big day.

That’s not to say Tom and Barbara let the side down in their haste. Far from it, actually. Barbara was a stunning winter bride, in a white satin dress, and matching cloak with a faux-fur-trimmed hood. There were bouquets of crimson roses by the chapel doors and on the altar, and sprigs of holly at the end of every pew. The couple had planned a humble reception, rather like Peter and Chummy’s: sandwiches and trifle at Nonnatus House. But then Tom had a surprise for everyone.

“A cawwo-sell!” Freddie exclaimed.

“HORSEYS!” Davey shrieked.

“Steady on!” Chummy cried as her sons took off down the cobblestones. Peter just laughed.

Freddie picked a horse on the outside ring of the carousel. Chummy sat behind him to keep him steady. Peter and Davey took the horse next to them in the same fashion. Beyond the carousel, an early winter’s night had fallen. A cold wind stung their cheeks. But within the carousel’s circle, the air was full of music and laughter. Friends smiled and waved from around the bend or through the gilded ceiling mirrors. There was the happy couple of course, then Fred Buckle and his nephew Reggie, and Nurses Crane and Dyer. Timothy and Angela Turner rode a horse together. Trixie accompanied Alexandra, the young daughter of her dentist beau. Even Sister Winifred and Sister Monica Joan eventually came aboard!

“Jus’ like Walt-an’-Maze!” Freddie beamed.

“That’s right,” Chummy affirmed, raising her voice over the organ music. “There’s a carousel in Walton-on-the-Naze, where we visit Nan and Granddad.”

“Although it’s not usually snowing when we’re on that one!” Peter grinned.

Sure enough: the first flurries of winter had started wafting down. The boys squealed with joy.

“Hey Fred-Fred! Freddie!” Peter called. Freddie didn’t hear him; he was too busy trying to catch snowflakes on his tongue. “Fred!”

Chummy nudged their son to attention. “Daddy’s speaking to you, young sir.”

“Freddie. You’re a big boy now, yeah? D’you think that, next summer, you could ride a carousel horse all by yourself?”

“Awright,” Freddie replied.

Chummy knew precisely was Peter was thinking. _That’ll free up one of us to ride with our little girl._ The couple shared a knowing smile. But their tender moment was cut short; Freddie was trying to squirm off his and Chummy’s horse whilst the carousel was still moving.

“Not _now_ , Fred! Stay with Mummy!”

\-----

They were making progress on the adoption. Tentative, private progress, but progress nonetheless. They’d moved Davey from the cot in the nursery to a toddler bed in Freddie’s room. They’d also settled on an adoption agency: the Church of England Children’s Society. As Peter pointed out to Chummy: “You’ve worked with their nuns, at home and abroad. That’s got to count for some brownie points.”

But recently, Chummy had stalled on the application. The Children’s Society asked not just for the father’s occupation, but also the mother’s. Chummy knew she should write something along the lines of “former nurse” or “retired midwife.” The emphasis on the past was important. The agency needed to know that she’d put her career behind her to focus on motherhood. And she had- at least until all of her children were in school.

So why, ever since the day Teddy Turner was born, did words like “former” and “retired” sting her with regret? Why did the titles “nurse” and “midwife,” which she used to wield with such pride, now feel ill-fitting and undeserved?

She slipped the application into a drawer and occupied herself with other things. It was easy enough as Christmas approached. The entire season felt rather like that carousel: a bright and happy blur of family and friends, a distraction from any concerns beyond itself. There was all the cooking and cleaning, shopping and gift-wrapping. There was the Christmas pantomime; they were doing _Jack and the Beanstalk_ this year. Chummy had to make Freddie’s costume and help him rehearse. She’d also invited Fred Buckle, who was playing Jack’s mother, to peruse her closet for shoes for his costume.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got these in pink?” he asked, holding up a pair of cream-colored stilettos. A gift from a Fortescue Cholmeley Browne sister-in-law, Chummy had worn them perhaps twice since 1955.

“No, but I daresay we could brush them down with some Lady Esquire.”

She’d sent out all her Christmas cards- a tad early, as usual. Cards from friends and family trickled in, filling up the mantelpiece first, then the sideboard. On Christmas Eve, she received a small, tattered envelope. The postmark was from Sewafe, Kono District, Sierra Leone.

_Merry Christmas! May you be blessed with peace, love and joy in this season as we remember our Savior’s birth._

_In His love,_

_Earl & Martha Baxter_

Every year, Chummy was a bit surprised to receive another Christmas card from the Baxters. After all, they’d only met for two days. Perhaps Mattie was as thorough with her address book as Chummy was. Or perhaps the Noakes had made an impression on her during that weekend in October of ’58. Lawks only knows why…

Two days after the campfire incident, whilst saying their farewells, Mattie pulled Chummy aside.

_“Honey, I’m gonna cut to the chase. I’m not trying to tell you what to do. But think long and hard about coming back here after you have your baby. If you’re anything like me, you’ve dreamed about Africa since you were a little girl. But we’re not little girls anymore, are we? We’re mothers._

_“Just pray about it, okay? I’m sure the Lord’s got plenty of work you could do back in England. It’s not chickening out, I promise. Earl and I have worked with lots of short-term missionaries who’ve done wonderful work- and then returned home. All of us are only called for a time. Some are just… called for less time than others.”_

Chummy had heeded Mattie’s advice, praying every day on the journey home. But then Freddie’s birth put her questioning on hold. Weak and depleted, with a newborn who’d likely suffered some degree of oxygen deprivation, Chummy’s ‘calling’ became getting them both through each day.

Months passed, and Freddie proved healthy and alert. Chummy was profoundly grateful; but she also grew restless as a housewife. Just when she’d resumed praying about her ‘calling’, her next-door neighbor went into labor with no midwife in sight, and the street cordoned off from ambulances. 

After delivering Mrs. Torpy’s baby, Chummy returned to Nonnatus House part-time. It was the perfect fit- until it wasn’t. At a year old, Freddie began struggling to breathe in the London smog. Meanwhile Peter was studying for a promotion and eyeing the clean-aired suburbs. Chummy scarcely had time to ponder the future of her own career, before a young patient telephoned Nonnatus asking for Chummy’s help. She was staying in a mother-and-baby home twenty miles outside the city, which just so happened to be in dire need of a new matron…

In hindsight, it seemed so very clear to Chummy that God had led her from one posting to another. And each had felt perfect- for a time. But what had been the constant in her life, from Nonnatus House to Africa, to Astor Lodge and then back to London?

It was Peter.

Mater used to nudge so many strident, confident suitors in Chummy’s direction; but none had ever charmed her quite like this soft-spoken Cockney bobby. No richer man could have made her feel as secure. No taller man could have made her feel as small, safe and treasured in his arms. She could be anywhere in the entire world. (Quite literally.) But as long as Peter and their children were there with her, Chummy knew that she was where she belonged.

Her ‘episode’ during Shelagh’s labor still embarrassed and unsettled her. She couldn’t quite understand why the Lord had allowed it to happen, or how it could possibly fit into His plan for her life. But then, it wasn’t her place to understand. And she knew her trials were miniscule in the grand scheme of human suffering…

Perhaps it had been nothing more than a hard lesson in her changing role. Best to leave midwifery to younger, stronger women. Or at least, to those blissfully unaware of the firsthand terror of a life-threatening birth. Midwifery had been Chummy’s calling- but only for a time. It hurt to resign herself to this. Until she remembered her next calling- and joyful anticipation eclipsed the grief.

She placed the Baxters’ card on the mantelpiece, went over to the desk, and pulled out the adoption application.


	13. The Letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gosh, Peter and Chummy are really doing this.

Trixie and Chummy staggered off the bus, stiff beneath their many layers of flannel, wool, and hand-knits. The pedestrians of West London all looked like extras in _Scott of the Antarctic._ Most had everything covered except their eyes. Chummy wore her scarf a bit lower than most to avoid fogging up her spectacles. Each time she exhaled, she could see the bitter cold air snatching her breath into ice crystals.

It was the worst winter Britain had seen in centuries. Between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, 1962, they were buried in fourteen inches of snow. Water lines burst, power lines fell, and milkmen and rubbish men failed to make their rounds. It was now February, 1963, and the country remained in the grip of an Arctic air mass. Snowmen built on Boxing Day were still holding their stick arms high six weeks later.

But with low winds, little additional snowfall since New Year’s, and frequent sunshine, folks were getting on with their lives as best they could. “Just like we did in the war,” Fred Buckle had bragged at the Christmas pantomime. Which, incidentally, had been postponed until two weeks after Epiphany due to a burst pipe in the community center.

The queue for the Harrods coat room was a mile long. While they waited, Chummy and Trixie unraveled their winter gear, then planned their shopping spree. New pajamas for Christopher’s daughter Alexandra, for the occasion of her first slumber party with school friends. Some new dress shirts and ties for Peter. A nice handbag for Trixie’s godmother’s birthday. Last but not least, the women were going to “spruce up our spring wardrobes,” as Trixie put it. She was convinced she could coax out Chummy’s inner glamour puss. Chummy had her doubts. Although she did rather like the new women’s fashion of paisley silks…

But first, they were off to the food hall for some fresh warm scones and piping-hot chocolate. Chummy was glad. She had news to share, and she thought she’d burst if she had to wait until the end of the day for a good sit-down chat. As soon as they’d placed their orders, she cleared her throat and said:

“Peter and I are applying to adopt.”

Trixie gasped. A glowing smile spread across her face as Chummy continued: 

“And we were wondering if you might do us the honor-“

“I would be thrilled!”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to ask yet!” Chummy teased.

“Well I _assume_ you want me to be the godmother.”

“Oh! Yes, that too. But actually, I wondered if you might be my referee.”

“I readily accept! On both counts!” Trixie beamed.

She reached across the table, taking both of Chummy’s hands in hers. Trixie squealed and bounced in her seat while Chummy quietly melted with joy. They used to act like this in the nurses’ quarters of Nonnatus House, while discussing Chummy’s policeman suitor.

“Oh, sweetie! You’re going to have a little girl!”

\-----

Peter asked his oldest friend, Police Sergeant Dave Thompson, to be his referee. Dave agreed, then clapped Peter on the shoulder and loudly declared him “not half a lad.” Some of the other bobbies overheard, and initially thought the Noakes were expecting another child by more conventional means.

For the couple’s joint referee, they decided to ask the Reverend Applebee-Thornton. Chummy had worked with the Reverend in Africa in 1958. Like the Noakes, the Reverend had since returned to England. Chummy telephoned him at his parsonage in rural Bedfordshire. He agreed to be a referee as readily as Trixie and Dave had. He then proceeded to wax poetic about the Noakes’ “steadfast, practical compassion,” and Chummy’s “care for Freetown’s least of these, as inspired by your humanity as by our Lord’s divinity…”

Perhaps the Reverend could sense Chummy’s bashfulness through the telephone line. (Her face certainly felt warm enough!) He soon moved on to numerous heartwarming anecdotes of other adoptive families he had ministered. They were on the telephone for nearly an hour when Peter began asking- loudly and pointedly- what was for dinner. The Reverend’s wife Jane was wheedling him in a similar manner; Chummy heard something about mucking out the pigs. 

When at last they hung up, Chummy couldn’t help but giggle. She was picturing the Reverend’s letter of recommendation arriving at the Children’s Society. Those poor secretaries would have a novel on their hands!

After all their referees’ enthusiasm, Peter wanted to shout their news from the rooftops. He started musing little offhand plans, here and there:

 _“We should ring my parents... We_ could _ring your father, or you could just write him if it’s less intimidating… If we tell any of your relatives in-person, I think it should be Al. Do you want to invite him round for tea?... When are we telling the boys?... When are we telling the Nonnatuns?...”_

But Chummy was more hesitant. Usually, a baby’s impending arrival had a sort of social blueprint. One was expected to spill the beans around the fourth month, once the greatest risk of miscarriage had passed, and when Baby would soon be making his or her presence apparent. But adoption lacked the predictable timeline of pregnancy. When was the ‘proper’ time to announce an adoption to one’s wider social circle? When did hope begin to outweigh risk?

She took Shelagh Turner aside after choir practice one day, and asked her precisely these things. 

“I don’t know if there’s really a ‘proper’ time.” Shelagh paused a beat in thought. “But Patrick and I started telling our friends and family once we’d received our acceptance letter. Are you thinking about adopting, Chummy?”

“It’s rather more than ‘thinking’ at this point,” Chummy confessed. “I hand-delivered our application to the Children’s Society’s London office yesterday. But we still haven’t told anyone, apart from our referees- and, well, now you also.”

“Oh! Well, that’s probably wise.”

Midwifery had given Shelagh plenty of practice in remaining calm whilst brimming with vicarious joy. She was grinning ear to ear, but her voice remained level- and too quiet for the other choir stragglers to eavesdrop.

“Do you have an appointment yet for an interview?”

“March fourteenth. Two weeks from Thursday,” Chummy replied.

Shelagh nodded. “A childcare officer will come to inspect the state of your home, and to speak to both you and Peter about the details of your application. You’ll receive your acceptance letter a few weeks later. That may be the best time to start telling people. As you said, there’s no predicting how long you’ll have to wait. But once that letter arrives, you’ll know that sooner or later, you _will_ have a child.”

Shelagh sounded terribly confident about the whole process. And why wouldn’t she, when she’d come through it all and now had her lovely daughter Angela? She gave Chummy an open invitation to ask her anything at all about the adoption interview. Chummy rather took advantage of that in the weeks to come. They would cross paths at church or the children’s nursery school, and Chummy would blurt the silliest questions. 

_“Should I wash the curtains before the childcare officer comes? What does one wear to an adoption interview? Will the childcare officer mind terribly if I serve store-bought biscuits for tea?”_

Shelagh answered each question with steady, gracious sympathy:

_“Only wash the curtains if it was getting time to wash them, anyway. I would suggest a skirt suit for you, a leisure suit for Peter, and whatever is tidy and comfortable for the boys. Timothy was in his ordinary school clothes for our interview and it wasn’t held against us. And I’m quite sure the childcare officer won’t mind store-bought biscuits, if they’re on the nicer side. Not Rich Tea- perhaps some chocolate fingers or Viennese sandwiches._

_“Remember, Chummy: the childcare officer is looking for good parents, not perfect ones. She wants to know that you and Peter will take good care of your daughter and never abandon her. Honesty, trust, and commitment are far more important than dusting or refreshments.”_

So the curtains remained hanging. Chummy took her and Peter’s second-best suits to the dry cleaner’s, and stocked up on Typhoo and Mr. Kipling. She tried not to fret, or over-clean the house. And she succeeded. At least until Wednesday, March 13th.

The Meteorological Office forecast a high over fifteen degrees today- for the eighth day in a row. Spring had sprung quite suddenly in Britain. Mother Nature didn’t so much as spare a glance back at Old Man Winter. (She was fed up with him, surely!) The Thames ran high with clear, sharp-smelling meltwater. Every garden in London was thick with soft, pungent mud.

Chummy tried to keep her boys inside while she cleaned. But they staged three jailbreaks by half past ten! That’s when she decided, rather than try to bar them from going out, she would forbid them _coming back in_. She put them in the little fenced-in back garden with some Tinker Toys, wooden cars, and their plastic sippy cups full of juice. She told Freddie to knock on the sliding glass door if they needed her. She could only clean the ground floor while they were out there, but it seemed the best possible solution.

At lunchtime, she brought towels, flannels, and a basin to the back door, and scrubbed both her sons on the spot before letting them further inside. She hoped to clean the first floor while they napped, but they were up and full of beans again before she’d vanquished even half of her to-do list. By the time Peter came home, Freddie and Davey were exiled to the back garden again. The last Chummy checked, they were chasing each other around with twigs.

Peter looked around the ground floor. Clutter was hidden away in convenient drawers; floors were vacuumed or scrubbed to perfection. Chummy had washed and ironed the slip covers, scrubbed the windows, and dusted every surface imaginable… She was worried that Peter would sigh and accuse her of “turning the house upside-down,” as he had at some of her other pre-hospitality cleaning sprees.

Instead, he smiled slightly and nodded.

“Hello, love. Sure looks nice in here. Want me to take the boys down the chippy? That way you won’t have to mess up the kitchen making us dinner.”

It was firmly in the running as one of the nicest things he’d ever said to her. (And there was plenty of robust competition for that title!)

The interview was at nine o’clock the next morning. This time, the boys really would have to play neatly and quietly indoors, while the grown-ups talked in the next room. Chummy bribed them with chocolate chip pancakes and a promise of an afternoon trip to the park. Peter coached them to be big boys, look their guests in the eyes and give them firm handshakes.

When the childcare officer and her secretary arrived, Davey whined and hid in Chummy’s skirt. But Freddie gallantly stepped forward, shook their hands and said “How do? I’m Fwed.”

Then he rammed his palm against his runny nose and snorted loudly.

It was the first of many little things that seemed to go wrong. Chummy knocked over the sugar bowl while serving the tea. Peter made a perfectly innocent joke about the Hand and Shears that, to a pair of stern strangers, could seem a bit off-color. Davey wandered into the sitting room with a whiffy nappy. When Chummy stood to take him to the next room, she managed to collide with the bookshelf and send Aunt Mary’s ceramic Siamese cat plummeting to the floor. The poor thing broke an ear off.

Chummy was certain that she and Peter fumbled some questions. The worst was when the childcare officer asked if they’d consider adopting a handicapped child. Peter boasted of Chummy’s nursing prowess- before backtracking and saying they could only accept certain handicaps, not just anything. Then Chummy tried to step in. She’d later recall blurting something about not wanting the boys to be left responsible for their sister’s care after she and Peter died. Although, of course, she and Peter weren’t _actually_ planning on dying anytime soon…

The entire meeting was rife with awkwardness. One got the sense that the childcare officer already had the answers to her own questions. She had a copy of their application in a folder, which she made no secret of referencing. The secretary scribbled shorthand onto a steno pad balanced on her knee.

Even though Chummy never had a chance to properly clean the first floor, she offered to show the two women the nursery before they left. They looked at their watches, then at each other.

“That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Noakes,” said the childcare officer. “We’ve seen plenty of terraced houses’ bedrooms, and we’ve seen from your ground floor that you know how to furnish a home.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” said Peter after they left. “Better than your mother’s first visit at the old two-up two-down. I think we did alright.”

 _I really don’t know what to think,_ Chummy thought.

\-----

A few weeks later, they were rehousing the camellia on Peter’s day off work. Peter dug a large hole in the flowerbed by the front door. Then he and Chummy worked together to move the giant terra cotta pot from the back garden shed, into the wheelbarrow and out to the front garden. They slowly, gently prised the camellia from its winter refuge. The shining emerald leaves shuddered and shifted, as together they lowered the plant back into the thawing ground.

The postman walked up, narrowly dodging another one of Freddie and Davey’s stick-swordfights. “Alright, Mr. and Mrs. Noakes?” he grinned. He looked pointedly at their muddy hands and forearms. “How ‘bout I drop these through the slot for you, then?”

“Yeah I s’pose that’s alright,” Peter grinned back. He was already reaching for the garden hose to clean himself up. Ever since the adoption interview, Peter had been rather antsy about the post. Antsier than his wife, even.

Peter splashed his hands in freezing water and wiped them on a clean patch of his shirt. Chummy finished packing dirt back in around the camellia. She looked up to find him standing beside her, envelope in hand. He cleared his throat.

“It’s, erm, from the Children’s Society.”

It felt as if he took a bally age to open that envelope. And was the wind picking up, or was he shaking?

Peter cleared his throat again before reading aloud.

_Dear Mr. and Mrs. Noakes,_

_After due consideration, we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted as adoptive parents. We have every confidence that in due course you will be able to offer an otherwise unwanted child-_

That’s as far as he got before she leapt up to embrace him. Only she accidentally knocked into him on the way up, sending him staggering back. She reached out and pulled him in, holding him tight. Each felt the other’s voice in their own ribcage as they welled up with sighs of relief, exclamations of triumph, laughter breaking through like little sobs of joy.

She leaned down to bury her head in his shoulder. He clumsily turned to kiss her on the cheek.

“We did it, love,” he murmured in her ear. “We’re really doing this.”


	14. The Photograph

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> News breaks at Nonnatus. The Noakes both have visions of the future. The pre-adoption "waiting game" comes to a surprising end.

Camilla took the rag doll Sister Monica Joan gave her before Davey was born, and placed it on top of the spice rack, where it looked down on the wall calendar. It was their little daily reminder of what they were waiting for. As if they could forget.

There was a toy shop near Peter’s station. All that spring, they had a girls’ tricycle in the display window. The white seat and handlebar grips were real leather. The frame was hot pink, and there were pink and red streamers on the ends of the handlebars. It’d be the envy of the sugar-and-spice half of the preschool crowd.

Peter frequently imagined marching in and buying the thing. Taking it home to a little girl in pigtails, a sundress, and saddle shoes with drooping socks. Pushing her down the wide streets of Drakefield Estate, while she shrieked _slow down!_ Or _Faster, Daddy, faster!_ Watching her learn to pedal and steer, her lower lip jutted in concentration. Seeing her take off after her brothers, all three of them laughing.

When the calendar turned from March to April, Camilla drew a big circle around Easter Sunday. Meanwhile, Peter started mentally rehearsing. They’d come to a decision.

They arrived at Nonnatus House in their Sunday best. Camilla walked through the open front door with a pan of roasted Jersey Royal potatoes. Peter corralled the boys, doling out the last of a bag of Jelly Babies that had kept them complacent through the lengthy church service.

“Are you sure you don’t mind a grand announcement?” he asked her.

He thought of her reluctance to tell her friends when she accepted a missionary posting to Africa. Or how she procrastinated throughout said posting on writing home with news of her first pregnancy. He thought of the things Trixie had told him about the morning of their wedding. While the other nurses swapped accessories and fussed over fickle hair dryers, Camilla had slipped away to sit alone in the convent chapel. She was quiet as the bridal party proceeded to the church. Trixie said she’d scarcely cracked a smile that morning.

But now she smiled easily. “I’m quite sure I don’t mind in the slightest. Now that it’s for certain.”

Of course. She may have waited until the last minute to tell the Nonnatuns about Africa; but to this day, she cherished the trinkets from their impromptu going-away party. She’d delighted in surprising them all with her “bit of extra luggage” on her return. And on their wedding day, from the moment she’d spotted Peter waiting for her at the altar, she beamed with pure joy. She never stopped, either! By that evening, she had a headache from smiling too much.

“Besides, I know you’ve been looking forward to this,” she added.

That was quite the understatement. Did Camilla realize just how long Peter had looked forward to a day like today? He used to daydream of future announcements to family: back when he was restless in his army bunk, or trudging through odd jobs before he joined the Police. He would imagine the future love of his life at his side, squeezing his hand to calm his nerves. He’d picture himself standing and chiming a fork against a drinking glass, real gentleman-like. The room would fall hush; perhaps he’d clear his throat before saying:

_“We’re getting married.”_

Or in another daydream, an epilogue of the first:

_“We’re having a baby.”_

The room would explode with happy noise. Dad and the uncles would shake his hand and clap him on the back; Mum and the aunties would squeal and fuss over the woman he loved. She deserved it, he knew. Long before they met, he was already proud of her.

Then it turned out that the love of his life wasn’t half bashful. Peter set aside his daydreams for the sake of her comfort. But this time, he felt, it was important to make a fuss. Not for his own sake, or even for Camilla’s- but for their daughter’s. Peter and Camilla had already agreed that someday, when she was old enough to understand, they’d tell their daughter that she was adopted. When that day came, Peter would also tell her the story of how happy all of Mum and Dad’s friends were to find out about her. That way she’d know that she was no less celebrated, no less wanted, than her brothers.

It didn’t matter that he was making the grand announcement to the Nonnatuns, instead of blood relatives. If anything, that was better. Most of their relatives were distant in one way or another. Nonnatus House had always been the place where Peter and Camilla could start new chapters of their life with men’s chortles and handshakes, and women’s squeals and embraces. With extended family, there was the risk that someone would say something untoward about adoption. Peter knew that wouldn’t happen here.

Still, he had butterflies in his stomach all through the pre-meal mingling, the finding of places, Sister Julienne’s grace. Once they started serving the lamb, he couldn’t wait any longer. His chair scraped as he pushed it back. All eyes were on him now. Trixie and Mrs. Turner smiled knowingly at him from beyond the tulip centerpiece.

He raised his glass. It was from Nonnatus House’s finest holiday set: there was gold along the rim. Camilla squeezed his other hand in encouragement.

“Camilla and I have an announcement. As some of you know, Davey is to be our last child by birth. However-“ he stopped to clear his throat. “We still have room in our home, and hearts, for another baby. So we’re adopting.”

The room broke into shrieks of joy and surprise.

“How soon?”

“Have you selected an agency?”

“Did you ask for a girl?”

“Oh how lovely!...”

Sister Julienne took Camilla’s hands in hers, offering encouragements and wisdom largely lost to the cacophony. Sister Winifred listened attentively to Freddie’s plans for his baby sister. Dr. Turner pecked his wife on the cheek while she drew Angela to her side.

Camilla surveyed the table. Her smile reminded Peter of their wedding day. “You’re glowing,” he observed.

“Hm. So are you,” she chuckled, warm and low. She edged towards him. He could smell her lilac perfume. Beneath the table, she ran a hand over his thigh.

He hoped she’d remember not to smile too much today. It’d be a shame if she had a headache tonight.

\-----

The calendar turned from April to May. There was no news from the Children’s Society just yet. Instead, there was a letter from Camilla’s father.

She mentioned that she’d written to Pa and told him about the adoption. She didn’t tell Peter that Pa had written back. Though she didn’t try to hide it, either. He found the letter, opened, atop a pile of papers on the rolltop desk. He scanned past the formal greetings and the reports on island weather, down to the inevitable diatribe:

_…You have always been a soft touch, and I suspect that Sergeant Noakes is hardly any sterner. While I cannot fault your intentions, I must advise caution in this endeavor. When adopting through a charity, one knows nothing of the family stock- except, of course, that the mother lacks prudence. Charities are prone to being blinded by their own compassion. One hears tales of adoption agencies obscuring mixed racial backgrounds- or worse, physical deficiencies- from prospective parents’ knowledge. I fear that you will receive an orphan that inspires gossip amongst your social circle, or one that demands disproportionate parental resources._

_You are a willful woman, Camilla, and I will not waste my time or yours in attempting to dissuade you. However, I reserve the right to hold your portion of my estate in trust for young Fred and David, particularly if the orphan girl does not meet with my approval. Do contact my solicitor with any questions or concerns…_

Peter had half a mind to telephone Madeira straight away. Not with any ‘questions or concerns’- just some very choice words. He only held back for Camilla’s sake.

He waited until evening, when the boys were asleep and his temper was cooled. She was about to climb into bed beside him when he said, “I saw your father’s letter.”

She stiffened and reached for her cross. “Did you?”

“Does it- change anything? About the way forward?”

“No. At least, not for me.”

“Me neither,” he asserted.

She looked at him, her brow furrowed. He thought she might say something else; then she hooked her hair behind her ear and looked down into her lap.

“Camilla,” he sighed. “Come here.”

She climbed beneath the covers and snuggled against him. He was sitting upright against the headboard; she was nestled down lower. It was one of their favorite positions for a good cuddle. Peter liked having her head on his shoulder, and she liked being able to look _up_ at him for once.

“When you picture her,” she asked, “What do you see?”

“My cousin Eunice.”

She grinned despite herself. “Gosh. I wasn’t expecting quite so specific an answer!”

“She’s Uncle Roger and Aunt Wyn’s youngest, remember?”

“Oh yes. At the horse farm. You’ve told me about her. Wasn’t she- pardon the expression- a bit of a ‘surprise youngest’?”

Peter nodded. “They thought Artie would be their youngest; Eun came along when he was nine or ten, I think. She was seven when Mum took Glad and me out to the farm, in ’39. My older cousins were far too busy to pay me mind- all fixing the join the Army or the QAs. But Eun, she couldn’t _wait_ to teach an eleven-year-old city kid all about the farm.”

“Perhaps she was lonely before you arrived.”

“I doubt that. She had loads of school friends, and all the grown-ups wrapped round her finger.” Peter chuckled. “Picture a dark-haired Shirley Temple. Or a little girl with Jenny Worth’s looks and Trixie’s personality. Black curls, blue eyes, cute dimples: that was Eun. She was as sweet as she looked, too. Still is. Got a sailor husband and a big brood of her own now, in Cardiff.”

“She sounds lovely,” Camilla said softly.

They fell quiet. Peter studied his wife from above. Her brown eyes were brooding beneath the long, soft lashes. She still fiddled with her cross.

“I’m afraid I can’t see her clearly just yet. Our little girl,” she confessed. “But one has a premonition, of sorts. That there will be something about her that won’t ‘meet with Pa’s approval.’”

“Good,” said Peter. “We’ll have that in common, then.”

She looked up, studying his calm expression. Slowly she smiled- and then she kissed him.

\-----

The calendar turned from May to June. There was still no news from the Children’s Society. Instead, the Applebee-Thorntons appeared on the Noakes’ doorstep.

“Good afternoon, _Sergeant_ Noakes!” the Reverend boomed. “Allow me to congratulate you on your promotion in-person! Although, goodness, that must have been almost three years ago now, wasn’t it? I’m quite sure that Chummy passed along my well-wishes at the time. I’ve always admired her diligence with written correspondence-“

The Reverend’s wife stopped him short with a light touch on his elbow. “Did we call at a bad time?” she asked Peter.

“Erm, no,” Peter fumbled. It was his day off; the four of them had recently returned from a trip to Victoria Park. The boys were playing languidly on the sitting room carpet while Camilla scrounged up their afternoon tea. “I’d say your timing’s perfect, actually. Come in.”

The Reverend was exactly as Peter remembered him from Africa. A short, balding man, endlessly cheerful and talkative, casually dressed apart from the collar. Even in cloudy England, he arrived wearing sunglasses and his signature Panama hat. He went straight through to the kitchen. He and Camilla were soon chatting as if they’d last seen each other yesterday, rather than four years ago at the Applebee-Thorntons’ wedding.

Frankly, Peter barely remembered the Reverend’s wife Jane. Her tenure at Nonnatus House only overlapped Camilla’s by a few weeks, and back then, she was painfully shy. Right now, she struck Peter as elegant yet practical. Her mousy hair was held back in a neat bun; she wore slacks and a short-sleeved turtleneck. She clasped her hands in front of her and surveyed the sitting room.

“You have a lovely home, Sergeant.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m sorry we’ve put you on the spot like this. It’s about your adoption.”

“Our adoption?”

Jane’s eyes widened. She looked down, blinking frantically. Peter was at a loss. Should he press for details? Reassure her? Keep quiet to spare her further embarrassment? Before he could make up his mind, she crouched down by the boys and their train set.

“Is that Thomas?” she asked.

“Edward,” Freddie corrected. “Thomas’s da small one.”

“Oh. Yes.”

“They all look alike to me,” Peter offered.

Jane smiled up at him. “I volunteer with our Sunday School. We have the whole set in the playroom. I thought I was getting the hang of the names, but…”

Freddie was more than happy to teach the nice lady all the trains’ names while they waited for tea. Peter wondered what Jane had meant about their adoption; he did his best not to pace the room. The minute he saw Camilla pick up a tray, he hurried to the kitchen to help, thus sparing her a second trip. The Reverend trailed them both, talking avidly.

“Ah, Sergeant! I was just telling your wife: Jane and I are in town for a conference on the Church’s role in supporting vulnerable children.”

The others quietly arranged themselves for tea, smiling and nodding at the Reverend’s wending narrative:

“Such a worthy topic, and with truly moving speeches from representatives of both secular and Christian charities. All credit for our attendance goes to Jane; she learned of the conference from a former colleague at St. Gideon’s Home. -Oh, thank you Chummy. No sugar, please, just milk. Yes, yes, delightful.- Anywho, at the conference luncheon, we were seated next to a Sister Mary Benedict. Such a sanguine, good-humored woman: she really has the perfect temperament for working with children! As luck would have it, she’s the Sister-in-Charge at the Church’s children’s home in Torquay.”

Peter and Camilla both sat up straighter at the words _children’s home._ Even Freddie stopped still, biscuit in hand.

“It’s interesting: when I mentioned my time in Sierra Leone, Sister Mary Benedict asked me about the orphanages in Africa! You’ll both recall, of course, how exceedingly rare child relinquishment is there. I explained to the Sister how the locals’ sprawling extended families and tribal associations ensure a ready supply of substitute parents, should the need arise! Contrast this, if you will, to our ‘civilized’ society, where children are so easily cast off. Though I suppose there are worse fates than being ‘cast off’ into the arms of cheerful nuns, with abundant toys and nourishment, all a stone’s throw from the seaside no less-“

Jane patted her husband’s hand. “Pippin.”

“Ah. Yes. Excuse me.”

Camilla grinned and raised her eyebrows at Peter. _Pippin?_

The Reverend leaned towards them both, his elbows on his knees. “Sister Mary Benedict told us about a little girl there, called Joan Evans. The nuns named her in honor of her birthday: December 27th, the feast of Saint John the Evangelist.”

“So she’s…” Peter ran the math. “Six months old now?”

“Eighteen months, actually. She was born in 1961, to a resident of a nearby mother-and-baby home. You know, of course, that most babies relinquished from such homes are adopted within a few short months. But Joan has special needs.”

Camilla squeezed Peter’s hand. “What sort of needs?”

“It was actually your letters, Chummy, that made me think of you both. I know you’ve been a tremendous help to your friend Rhoda, the one whose daughter was affected by thalidomide.”

The Reverend paused and tented his fingers. The room was so silent, Peter swore he could hear the dust swimming in the summer sunlight.

“I’m afraid that little Joan was also exposed to thalidomide in the womb. She’s missing both her arms, you see. Although Sister Mary Benedict assured us that she’s quite healthy otherwise. ‘Sharp as a tack, and getting cheekier with age,’ she said. One got the sense that she’s a favorite amongst the nuns!”

“She gave us a photograph. One of those new color Polaroids,” Jane piped up. She pulled the photograph from her handbag, keeping it face-down. “But we understand if you don’t want to see it just yet. It might be too much, us coming here out of the blue…”

“It’s not too much,” Peter said, at the same time that Camilla blurted: “Can we see her?” Both Noakes were now perched on the very edge of the settee, their knees against the coffee table.

Jane passed the photograph to them, face up. Peter scarcely noticed the little girl’s missing arms, the three or four fingers peeking out directly beneath the shoulders of her sundress. Instead he was drawn to her black curls, blue eyes, and dimples.

Like a dark-haired Shirley Temple.


	15. No Guarantees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chummy knows the adoption decision will be controversial- but the first resistance comes from an unexpected and heartbreaking source.

“I simply cannot get past her name.”

“We can still change it,” Peter frowned. “She’s plenty young enough.”

Chummy and Peter sat up in bed, passing the Polaroid of little Joan back and forth. They almost talked to the picture more than to teach other. It had been two days since the Applebee-Thorntons’ visit, and in that time they’d memorized the sight of those sparkling blue eyes. The sticky toddler smile. The wild black curls. The empty space beneath the shoulders of that little frayed sundress.

“It’s not the name itself that bothers me. It’s the fact that the Church picked it,” Chummy explained. “At Astor Lodge, we encouraged all the girls to name their babies- even if they were intent on giving them up. It was something for the mothers to remember them by. And if the child ever went looking, that name would be in their file: a gift from their birth mother.”

Her voice had grown husky with feeling. Peter rubbed her shoulder, and she let herself lean against him.

“One wonders why Joan’s birth mother never named her. What the poor girl must have gone through…” She swallowed hard. “Sorry. I’m working myself into a frightful tizz.”

“You are not. You’ve a caring heart, is all. And you’ve worked with girls like Joan’s birth mother. Both those things’ll do you credit as her mum.”

“Do you think so?” she asked.

He pecked her on the cheek. “I know so.”

Chummy was having trouble sleeping. She’d experienced an uptick in nightmares ever since Teddy Turner’s birth, but these last few nights were something different. Her dreams now weren’t frightening- just incredibly vivid. She felt the trembling sobs of a teenage patient held in her arms. She smelled the warm salt air in Devonshire. She saw a flash of _rani_ pink cotton, heard her _ayah’s_ voice. She heard children laughing, smelled baby shampoo, felt soft curls against her cheek.

When she awoke, she’d reach for the Polaroid on her nightstand. She didn’t bother turning a light on. The point wasn’t to see the picture, but to hold it. She had to hold _something._ And for now, the picture was all she had.

It was as if she’d been shifted by a powerful, unseen source. Like a deep water current, or a change in the weather. A child she’d never met had taken a place in her heart in record time. Already she thought of herself as little Joan’s mother.

Peter felt the shift as well. She wished she could say she knew it simply on wifely intuition: that she’d sussed it out from his pensive looks, the inflection in his quiet words. But on their third or fourth night sitting up together, he just came out with it:

“We have to adopt her. It feels meant to be, like she’s already ours. And besides: if we don’t take her in, who will?”

It wouldn’t be easy. They kept telling each other that. Peter had dreamed of teaching their daughter to ride a tricycle, taking her camping with the boys, working with her in the garden. How could she do any of these things without arms? And people would talk. People would _stare._

“No matter. I’m quite accustomed to people staring,” Chummy grinned.

“Camilla. This is different.”

“Yes. I know.”

“People will think you took a bad drug.”

“Not intentionally; no one knew it at the time. Quite a few good women took that ‘bad drug’. Including, need I remind you, Rhoda Mullucks.”

And thank goodness for Rhoda Mullucks. Not that Chummy had told her about Joan yet; she didn’t want Rhoda’s reaction swaying her and Peter’s decision, for better or for worse. But their friendship had given Chummy the courage to consider adopting Joan in the first place.

Susan Mullucks was two years old now; she was as bright, beautiful, and healthy as ever. Her older siblings doted on her; Chummy’s boys adored their playdates with her; her baby sister Heather had never known a world without her. She had physiotherapy at the London every Thursday, and had already been fitted with state-of-the-art prosthetic limbs. Though she eschewed the bulky plastic limbs at home. She’d rather find her own ways to feed herself, play with her dollies, and move about the house. According to the other mothers in Rhoda’s support group, this was all par for the course. Feats of engineering were no match for stubborn toddlers.

Once they adopted Joan, Chummy fully intended to join that support group. Rhoda made it sound like a veritable gold mine of information. Parents swapped tips on everything, from toilet training, to modifying clothing, to convincing the nursery school headmistress to let their children enroll. They also shared stories of historical figures who were born missing limbs, but lived meaningful lives regardless. Rhoda’s favorite was Sarah Biffen, a Victorian portrait artist who held her paintbrush in her mouth. She’d lived independently, and in quite good health, to the age of sixty-six.

“But Sarah Biffen wasn’t actually exposed to thalidomide,” Chummy explained to Peter. “There’s still so much about the drug that we simply don’t know. The oldest thalidomide children in the entire world are only four and a half years old. There could be other effects that only become apparent years down the line… We have no guarantee that the children will continue to thrive.”

“Isn’t that the case for all kids, though? If you stop and think about it,” he pointed out. “There’s never any guarantees.”

She thought of Freddie’s chest colds and ear infections, and how they always cost her a night’s sleep. Even once Freddie finally went down, Chummy just couldn’t do the same. She would sit by his bed, practically holding her breath. She’d get out her knitting, just to stop herself from reaching out and touching his forehead every three minutes.

“No,” she sighed. “I suppose there aren’t.”

They telephoned their adoption caseworker, and then the orphanage. The Children’s Society’s response was swift and enthusiastic. In just two weeks’ time, the Noakes would travel to Torquay to meet Joan Evans, take her home, and foster her with the intent to adopt.

\-----

Jenny sat lengthwise across the Noakes’ settee, her blouse pulled up to expose her prominent bump. Chummy ran routine midwifery checks with Trixie’s work tools. Trixie herself perched on the armrest of a nearby chair, giggling the hardest of the three.

“Heartbeat’s strong and steady, Mrs. Worth,” Chummy reported. “And you’re measuring thirty-five centimeters precisely. Everything’s tickety-boo.”

“And marvelous?” Jenny teased.

“And marvelous,” Chummy smiled.

“Shouldn’t we check Baby’s lie?” Trixie asked.

“Honestly, you two!” Jenny huffed playfully as she pulled her blouse back down. “I _am_ booked with a midwife, you know.”

“Sorry, old thing. It’s a bit of a sororal ritual, I suppose. When one of our own is expecting, and not under our own care, we simply must run her through the paces.”

“What Chummy means to say,” Trixie grinned. “Is she can’t let you off too easy, after we poked and prodded her _both_ times she came back to Nonnatus ‘top-heavy’.”

Chummy helped Jenny to sit up straight. Jenny ‘oofed’ with effort, which only made Trixie grin even wider. Jenny shot her a dirty look.

“Don’t go smirking at me, Nurse Franklin! It’ll be you next. Although I’d quite like to meet this Mr. Dockerill in-person before you tie the knot.”

Trixie’s smile froze wide; the mirth vanished from her eyes. Chummy’s stomach sank. She knew that look.

“Alright, Trixie?”

“Of course. Only, Mr. Dockerill and I broke things off. So Jenny, you won’t have to bother with meeting him after all.”

The others watched in silence as Trixie leaned towards the coffee table. She pinched a lemon puff from the tea tray with all the exaggerated poise of a finishing-school student balancing a plate on her head.

“These look delicious.”

“They’re from the bakery in Shandy Street… Wh-what do you mean, ‘broke things off’?” Chummy asked.

“I mean,” Trixie spoke slowly, as if to a small child. “That Christopher Dockerill and I are no longer in any sort of courtship. Lemon puff, Jenny?”

“Two please,” Jenny chimed. Trixie loaded up a saucer and passed it to her. Chummy still stared in shock.

“But why?”

“It’s what’s best for his daughter, Alexandra. Now. I thought we were here to fuss over Jenny, not to interrogate me on my social life.”

“We’re only asking because we care about you,” Jenny said primly.

“And I care about you! Which is why I’ve brought this lovely gift for Baby.” Trixie pulled a neatly gifted-wrapped LP from her nurse’s bag. “No prize for guessing what it is! Chummy, didn’t you say you have a gift, as well?”

Chummy actually had two gifts at the ready. One was a lemon yellow baby blanket that she’d hand-knitted. The other was a package from Cynthia Miller. Cynthia couldn’t join them today; after her second stint in a psychiatric hospital, she’d moved back in with her parents near Birmingham. But she’d mailed a gift to Chummy to present on her behalf.

Jenny opened Cynthia’s gift first. It was a picture book called _The Velveteen Rabbit._ Apparently, Jenny and Trixie both had it read to them as children; they agreed it was a very touching choice. Chummy skimmed a few pages and found out exactly what they meant. She dabbed her eyes with her hankie while they moved on to Trixie’s gift: _Classical Lullabies: Brahms, Schumann, Faure & More._ Jenny read the track list off the back of the LP sleeve, feigning offense that Mussorgsky wasn’t included.

Next came Chummy’s gift. The blanket practically spilled out of the massive, clumsily-wrapped package. Jenny found two corners and held them up, her arms spread wide- but the blanket still sagged in the middle. The center pooled generously in what was left in her lap, while the far end flopped to the floor.

“Good Lord, Chummy!” Trixie exclaimed. “Is that a blanket or a tapestry?”

“One may have gotten a bit carried away,” Chummy blushed. “Although, it rather reminds me of a _godh bharai._ That means ‘filling the lap’ in Hindi. It’s a celebration where an expectant mother’s female relatives and friends ‘fill her lap’ with gifts for Baby.”

“I think the Americans just call that a baby shower,” Jenny quipped.

It felt like old times, all the teasing and giggling. Still, there were forlorn little pauses in the conversation when Chummy remembered Trixie’s breakup. And she was frightfully baffled.

Chummy had met Christopher quite a few times. Never once did she get the impression that he might be laughing behind her back at her accent, her looks, or her size. Not many men passed that litmus test- especially not men as handsome as him. She could see how he wouldn’t miss a beat when Trixie told him that she was in Alcoholics Anonymous. Or how the nuns all found him delightfully helpful and polite when he was snowed in at Nonnatus House last winter. There was great empathy and thoughtfulness beneath his style and charm. He was a lot like Trixie in that respect.

Chummy liked Christopher Dockerill. More than that, she felt that he actually _deserved_ her best friend. This made him the first in a six-year string of admirers. And yes, that included Tom Hereward, Trixie’s ex-fiance. The curate was a good man. But there were many layers to Trixie, and Tom only ever knew the topmost few. Christopher went deeper. From their shared affinity for moonlight picnics and Hitchcock films, to the strength and courage of Trixie’s sobriety, all the way down to…

Well, after a holiday weekend this spring, suffice to say that Christopher knew Trixie in ways that no man ever had before.

Jenny was tidying her gifts into a little pile, while Trixie stared off into the distance with pain in her eyes.

“Sorry,” Chummy blurted. “But are you really packing in Christopher for Alexandra’s sake? I was under the distinct impression that she thought you hung the moon.”

Trixie’s nostrils flared. “Leave it be, Chummy. Please.”

 _Let us not poke at wounds we cannot heal._ The command came from inside Chummy’s head, but outside of herself.

Jenny shifted uncomfortably on the settee. “Any news on the adoption front, Chummy?”

“Oh. Well. Yes, actually-“

She moved to clear the tea things, but was so flustered that she knocked the teapot to the floor. Good job the tea was lukewarm and the area rug was just a cheap, modern thing.

“Just let me sop this up, and then I’ll give you a little tour of the nursery.”

She knew Jenny would be excited to see the nursery. Their recent letters back and forth had contained parallel adventures in decorating. But Chummy now had an extra surprise up her sleeve. (Or rather, in her nightstand drawer.)

She thought she could slip into her bedroom unnoticed while the others headed on. Instead they stopped in the middle of the corridor. As soon as she turned around to face them, the picture hidden against her blouse, Jenny and Trixie started squealing with delight.

“Is that-?”

“We’ve spoken to the agency,” said Chummy.

“And did they-?”

“It seems our nursery’s going to be occupied quite soon,” she announced.

“You tease! Is that a picture of her? Oh, show us already!”

She handed it over. The squeals subsided quickly, replaced by furrowed brows. Chummy’s heart sank. She’d already grown so accustomed to the look of Joan; she didn’t think to explain…

“Where are her arms?” Trixie demanded.

“Surely she’s got them behind her back,” Jenny frowned. “It’s a trick of the light-“

“No. She doesn’t.” Chummy paused. “Her birthmother… she took thalidomide, unfortunately.”

Jenny held the photograph in one hand; the other hovered over her mouth. “I’ve read about this,” she murmured slowly. “Does she… have normal legs?”

“Yes, and she’s in perfect health.”

“Apart from the tiny detail of no arms,” Trixie snapped.

“Trixie!” Jenny scolded. “It’s Chummy and Peter’s decision-“

“And if it only affected _them_ , I’d support it wholeheartedly. But you have two other children, Chummy!”

Chummy remembered the woman in the toy shop last year who mistook Susan for Chummy’s daughter. _You’ve got two healthy boys. It’s not fair to them, keepin’ that poor thing at ‘ome!_ It was one thing to be criticized by a stranger; Chummy had held her head high then. But hearing it from one’s best friend was a different kettle of plaice entirely. She scarcely knew what to say.

“Peter and I have talked. We know there are risks, but we feel called to give this little girl a home.” 

Trixie scoffed at the word ‘called.’ But Chummy continued.

“Freddie and Davey will love and protect their sister-“

“You can’t put that sort of burden on them! They’ll grow up to resent it!”

“I don’t recall Cynthia ever ‘resenting’ her parents keeping her little brother at home,” Jenny retorted.

“Oh yes, there’s a good example. Because Cynthia’s so _very_ well-adjusted,” Trixie snarled.

Jenny’s mouth fell open; she planted her hands on her hips. Trixie turned away from her and back to Chummy.

“Chummy, you can’t do this,” she half-whispered, ragged and urgent. “I’ve seen families torn apart by a child’s disability. Just last week, one of our patients-“

“We’ve all had patients with disabled family members. Most love them and make do the best they can!” Jenny protested. “Wounded fathers, children with birth defects. Even the Turners went through polio. Even _your_ family-“

“My family has _nothing_ to do with this!” Trixie cried. “And besides, we had no choice. But Peter and Chummy do! They could have another girl- a healthy one- if they’d just wait a little longer. But instead Chummy’s had another bloody _calling,_ so we all have to stand back and applaud while they ruin their sons’ lives!”

The Caplans' dog had heard the commotion through the wall and had started barking. Trixie’s long blonde side-fringe had fallen into her face. Her eyes were glinting, her shoulders squared. Chummy took Jenny’s hand; it was shaking. They could only stare as Trixie turned on her heel and stomped downstairs.

“Trixie,” Chummy called softly. “Please, don’t…”

They heard the front door slam.


End file.
